


Bleeding Heart

by ishouldwritethatdown



Category: Wolverine (Comics), X-23 (Comic)
Genre: Adopted Children, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family Feels, Found Family, Gen, Logan Stop Adopting All These Children, No One Is CisHet And That's Just How It Is, Normal Life (eventually) AU, Past Brainwashing, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, So Many Adopted Children, more like slam dunking canon in the trash and starting over, my city now, sometimes literally finding your family in the woods
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-04-30 09:02:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 46,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14493504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishouldwritethatdown/pseuds/ishouldwritethatdown
Summary: "We don't get to play happy families. I can't take a nine-to-five job, disappear into something with a picket fence, and make you sandwiches.""Why not?""Because I'm Wolverine and I attract violence and insanity. Not just regular insanity. Our picket fence will be stepped on by Galactus. Our sandwiches... will also be stepped on by Galactus. He has a fence-and-sandwiches encompassing foot."BUT WHAT IF THEY COULD THO.





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> No one's here for canon accuracy and we all know it. The series' I'm considering (loosely) canon for the purposes of this are _Wolverine: First Class_ and _Kitty Pryde & Wolverine_

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> X-23 always found her marks. Always. Weapon X was no different. It was just a matter of waiting until he was alone. Hovering out of range of the telepaths concealed within the mansion where he spent his days. When he left to be among the trees in the evening, all she had to do was follow him. X-23 had been prepared for Weapon X.
> 
> But Laura had not been prepared for Logan. She had not been prepared for an apology, or an offer, or any of the many unexpected things that followed. And she didn't know it, but he was just as unprepared for all of this as she was.

The kid was good. He would give them that.

They were keeping out of sight, waiting until he was alone. He only caught onto their presence out of luck, when the wind carried their scent to him for a second. By that point, it was all he could do to get out of the way and hope they didn’t want to cause too much collateral.

He was tending a campfire, surrounded by dark pillared firs, when he heard a minute rustle of grass on his five o clock. Could be some little critter, but…

“You wanna stop joking around, kid? I know you’re there.”

They didn’t wait around for formalities. Logan heard another rustle of grass and his claws came out to defend his face before he could process their small body hurtling towards him. His heart stopped in the following instant, expecting a splash of hot blood, but it was the _clang_ of adamantium on adamantium that met his ears.

They were something like a foot shorter than him, with a grimace on their face and hate in their eyes. Two gleaming claws extended from their knuckles and pressed against his own.

Their hair was cropped short. They were wearing a full-body suit designed for mobility. And that hatred in their eyes…

Oh yeah. This was a Weapon X kid if he ever saw one.

“Can we talk about this?” he asked, flicking his wrist so that their claws came free from his. He sheathed his own. _Just a kid. Just a kid…_

They snarled at him. They slashed, he dodged.

_Not a big talker. I get it, I get it…_

“Kid, I don’t know what happened to you. But I do know you didn’t deserve it.”

Slash. Dodge.

“This doesn’t have to be messy,” he said. He stripped off his jacket as swiftly as he could and felt the night air’s chill on his shoulders.

They roared and lunged for him, and he would have countered their attack perfectly – if he’d known what he was looking for. The claw in their foot sliced right through his side. The blood gushed, and then the wound started to heal up. But while he was still reeling, they had an opening to cut into him more. He only managed to partially stop the claw that was on the way to his jugular; it still made a cut, even if it was shallower than it would have been.

They twisted from the grip he had on their hand, swung close to the ground, and then slammed their palm into one of his still-closing wounds. It stung like hell; they’d shoved dirt in there.

He stumbled back. “What’re you doing, kid? Trying t’ annoy me to death? I ain’t gonna die from an infection.”

Their next slew of attacks were easier to avoid than the last, but that wasn’t saying much. They crammed more soil into the cuts they made, and when Logan started to feel the blood trickling down his body from the wounds that weren’t closing, he understood what their goal was.

“You’re bleeding me out. Clever kid…”

He was getting dizzy. The berserker was tugging at the edges of his consciousness, itching to take over. He beat it back. _Just a kid. They’re just a kid…_

Their knee slammed into his face, and then he was on the ground. He didn’t stop the pained groan that escaped him. He could feel the blood pooling beneath him, staining his shirt, soaking his hair. The kid might very well kill him at this rate.

They were on top of him. Their claws were catching the light of the fire, still burning close by. If his eyes had stopped there, he would really have thought that these were his final moments.

But their eyes were catching the light of the fire, too. The tears making their green irises shimmer, the scrunched-up nose, and the tremor in their hands told him everything he needed to know; they were terrified.

“Kid,” he croaked. “I’m starting to think you have some kinda beef with me.”

“Shut up!” they screamed. “Weapon X must be destroyed!”

His fists clenched at the name. His claws pushed at the skin inside his hands on instinct, but he used whatever restraint he had left to keep them in.

_Just a kid… Just a kid…_

“My name is Logan,” he said, teeth gritted. He wasn’t prepared for the pitch of their voice. Even looking at their little frame, he expected it to be deeper. “Not Weapon X.”

“Liar!” they yelled. “You did this to me! Everything I am is because of **you**!” Their claws had been sheathed to tiny spikes, and they there holding them against his neck. If they sliced at the right angle, they could take off his head.

“I’m sorry.”

They drew back, just ever so slightly. “What?” they whispered.

“I’m sorry for what they did to you. I’m sorry that they made you out of me. I’m sorry, kid. I’m sorry. But you don’t have to be what the made you into.”

They hadn’t expected this. Weapon X was their boogeyman. It was the monster under their bed. It wasn’t supposed to be _sorry_.

“No. No, we—we are weapons. We have to…” their voice was wobbling. Their hands came away from his neck. “We have to be destroyed…”

He could feel his hand shaking, and when it slipped into the blurry edges of his vision, it looked pale in the firelight. He was trying to be gentle, but even if he hadn’t, he couldn’t have held their wrist at all tightly. “If you need to kill me, then go ahead.” He guided their fist back against his neck. “I probably deserve it.”

Their breath caught in their throat. It was a wet breath, all the tears they were refusing to cry soaking into their every motion.

“But I’m not going to let you kill yourself.”

They took their hand back. The tears couldn’t be contained any longer – first the water ran from their eyes, and then snot from their nose.

_Just a kid… They’re just a kid._

He hoped they wouldn’t call his bluff. There was no way he was going to be able to stop them doing anything they wanted to themselves, not in this condition. And especially not if they killed him first.

“No, w-we… we _both_ have to die! It… it has to end…”

His vision was swimming. He couldn’t tell if he was crying, or just passing out. He struggled to get the words out before he lost consciousness. “Listen to me, kid. You didn’t deserve anything that’s happened to you. An’ you don’t deserve to die.”

The light drained from his eyes until he was staring at darkness. His shallow breaths were loud in his ears, at first, but were in decrescendo. The smell of his blood seemed to be getting further away, but in his dwindling senses, he could feel a little kid resting their head against his stomach. He could feel their fingers curl around his. He could hear them sob, “I am sorry.”

\---

Logan came-to feeling strangely warm. The crackle of the fire accounted for the warmth on his cheek, but it took some shuffling and blinking to figure out that the kid had retrieved his jacket and draped it over him.

He sat up, stiff, feeling the stickiness of the not-quite-dry blood all over his back. The kid was sitting on the other side of the fire, hugging their legs. Watching him.

He shrugged the jacket on and looked at the fire. The kid must have retrieved more firewood while he was out, because it was still burning high.

“Thank you,” he said.

They didn’t respond. They were looking into the fire now, too, their mouth hidden behind their knees. Sparks rose into the air, drifting like snow in reverse, and they both watched them go in silence.

He could have been imagining the family resemblance. He saw his dark hair, his mother’s eyes, the jawline that would one day square up along with their shoulders. He might have been noticing those things because he was looking for them. But really, those claws were all he needed to know for sure.

Eventually the need for information outweighed the comfort of the ambient noise in the woods. “You got a name, kid?” he asked.

Their eyes didn’t move from the fire. Logan thought they might not respond, but then they said, “X-23.”

His mouth twitched. Didn’t take a genius to figure out what the designation meant. Twenty-three attempts.

“You already kill the bastards who hurt you?”

They nodded.

“Good. I would’a done it otherwise.”

That made them look up. Their expression didn’t give anything away; they’d been trained to hide their emotions well. None of the vulnerability he’d seen in them before. But he could tell that his comment had taken them by surprise.

“Are you a boy? A girl? Something else entirely?”

They averted their eyes again. The smoke in between them was obscuring his senses, but he thought he caught a hint of fear. Then their eyes snapped back to his, ready to fight off a hurricane, and she said, “A girl.”

He nodded once. “Okay.”

He could picture it. Same brand of assholes that hurt him years ago, the looks on their faces when their precious Weapon X was a female. How were they going to make a formidable killer out of _this_?

Yeah. Same brand of assholes make same brand of asshole moves.

He was looking at her hair; less than half an inch long all the way around.

He could remember the razor against his skin, shaving him bare before they threw him in the tank. They hadn’t tried to cut it after that; no one wanted to get close enough. His hair had been brushing his shoulderblades when he got out, a wild and greasy mess.

This kid had been kept trimmed. Clean. Treated with surgical precision.

They hadn’t wanted a beast this time around; they’d wanted a tool.

“I’ve gotta change out of these clothes,” he grumbled, ignoring the sick feeling in his stomach. “And shower.” He pushed himself to his feet. He’d left the mansion after all of the kids had been sent to bed. With any luck, none of them would see him covered in blood with a ghost in his eyes.

Not that most of them hadn’t seen him like that already. But Kitty was annoying enough as it was without her pestering him about going on secret missions in the middle of the night.

The kid hadn’t moved from her spot by the fire. She was staring into it, still, ignoring him.

 _I don’t do goodbyes_. That was what he said to Kitty when she went home for Hannukah. He said it every year. Every year she rolled her eyes and said, _Shut up and give me a hug, Wolvie._

When he approached her side of the campfire, she tensed. He placed his jacket around her, and when his hands rested on her shoulders for a moment, she leaned into him. Just for an instant. She probably didn’t realise she was doing it.

“See you tomorrow, kid,” he said.

On the ride back to the mansion, he tried not to think about the fact that he had no idea what to do. He couldn’t take the kid to the Institute; she was too volatile to be around so much chaos, and besides…

He focused on the road. Ignored the ugly, ragged scars on his mind where he hadn't healed quite right. He had to help her be better.

Her words were still echoing in the back of his mind: “Everything I am is because of **you**!”

Pulling up to the garage at the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, he forced his thoughts elsewhere. _Think about the crush Kitty won’t stop complaining about and refuses to act on. Think about that horrendous outfit Banshee put together. Hank’s cookies. The hockey game on Friday._

_Don’t think about the kid._

“Oh, good Lord, Logan!” Hank exclaimed.

_Think about your surroundings, Logan, you dumbass._

It should have been hard to miss a six-foot blue bespectacled man that smelled like a mountain lion wearing laundry detergent, but apparently that was what Logan had done. His book had slipped from his paw in his surprise.

Logan did a cursory glance around the drawing room to verify that they were the only people present. “You lost your page,” he remarked.

Hank glanced at his book and seemed momentarily distressed to confirm this fact, but his attention quickly returned to Logan. “What on Earth happened to you?”

“None of the kids are still up, right?” he asked.

“No. Logan, I don’t appreciate you avoiding my question,” he answered pointedly.

“Just keeping the mystery alive, Hank,” he said. He didn’t step onto the room. As he started down the corridor again, he heard Hank sigh, and start flicking the pages of his book.

He made it up the stairs without encountering anyone else. He retrieved a fresh set of clothes from his room and then stepped into the shower. He scrubbed at the blood plastering his skin, and it came off in flakes and made the water run red down the drain. He worked shampoo through his hair and focused on the circular motions he was making.

Charles hardly ever poked around inside his head unless he was addressing him directly, and Jean tended to avoid looking into his mind at all if she could help it. It was too much of a mess in there. But if his worrying about the kid got loud enough, he’d get unlucky.

He considered taking off. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d taken leave from the X-Men. It wouldn’t even be the first time he had refused to explain why.

But he had a responsibility. To the team. To Kitty. No, he couldn’t leave. He’d just have to try and do both at once.

Oh, boy.

He collapsed onto his bed and melted into a warm, slightly dizzy limbo for some indeterminable amount of time. What felt like moments later, something real and solid tapped his arm, and his claws were out before he could think about it, swiping at what felt like empty air. 

“Woah! Hey. It’s me,” Kitty said.

Logan pushed his face out of his pillow and cracked open his eyes. There was bile in his throat, and he scowled at her. “You trying to get yourself killed, Half-Pint? You know better than to touch me while I’m sleeping. I could’a…”

“I was ready for you,” she dismissed. “Started phasing right away.”

“Still a dumbass move,” he grumbled, and sat up. She’d opened the curtains in his bedroom – or maybe he’d forgotten to close them. Daylight was pouring in already, much more than it was when he usually rose in the morning. “What time is it?”

“Nine o’clock,” she answered.

Five hours’ sleep. That wasn’t all that bad. But his head was pounding with a million unprocessed thoughts already. He had to keep them contained, had to keep his brain in check, otherwise prying minds might see—

Ah. Right. The kid.

His to-do list started churning like a washing machine. _Big day ahead… big day…_

“Earth to Logan. You in there, Wolvie?” Kitty asked, waving a hand in front of his face.

“What do you need, kid?” he asked, running a hand over the stubble on his chin.

She jabbed a thumb at the door. “You said you’d run me into town, remember? To get a present for You-Know-Who?”

Given Kitty’s relentless babbling about You-Know-Who, it would have been fairly reasonable for Logan to forget when she had, in the midst of talking about his beautiful eyes or his wonderful voice or whatever else it had been that day, suddenly exclaimed that she had to buy him a birthday present with some urgency, and would Logan take her into town to find something on Saturday morning thank you anyway his beautiful _eyes_.

But as it happened he did remember this particular incident, as well as the information that it was now Saturday morning.

He groaned. “Can’t this wait until the afternoon?” he asked. And then he decided he didn’t want to hear whatever ridiculously detailed day-plan Kitty had for this Saturday and how her schedule was going to suffer if she was forced to shuffle around her items. “No, you know what, it’s fine. Give me ten minutes and we can go.”

Her smile brightened. “You’re the best, Wolvie!” she declared, and practically skipped from his room.

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered.

On the drive into town, he let Kitty’s teenage girl problems fill his brain. Pop songs and crushes and what to wear a week on Tuesday, and how to bypass the security on Hank’s new school network system. This was normal for her. It was normal for _him_ , the amount of times he had helped her run errand after errand.

“I don’t know what to get him, Logan. His gift for me was so thoughtful…”

He let his eyes scan over the shops they were walking past, but didn’t really take them in. He was trying to remember what Piotr had got Kitty. “I thought he got you a bracelet?”

“He did,” she said, sounding about the standard level of lovestruck. “A charm bracelet, with a cat on it. It means he’s going to get me more charms, for my next few birthdays. Don’t you see what that means?”

“That he never has to think about what he’s going to get you for your birthday ever again? Smart boy.”

She shoved his shoulder with her own. She was rapidly catching up to him in height, but the kid still couldn’t – probably never would – get him to budge with her mightiest shove. “It means he wants to be in my future,” she said.

He didn’t point out that they would be living in the same house for the foreseeable future anyway. She thought for a moment. “Maybe I could get him a watch, or…”

“Mm, so he can spend every waking minute counting down the seconds until your next birthday. Good thinking.”

“Stop teasing,” she said, “this is serious.”

“Right. Sorry.” He tried to suppress his smile. He spotted an outdoor gear store and suddenly his mind was elsewhere. A specific elsewhere, about three miles outside of the Xavier Institute, in the woods.

She would be fine on her own. She would have had survival training in whatever program she was in. And even if she’d never hunted an animal before, she could stalk humans well enough to figure it out.

She would be _fine_. But she wouldn’t be _good_.

Good was a warm bed. Good was food on the table. Good was school, and trips to the park, and crushes, and as many flavours of ice cream as she could possibly have. He wanted to give this kid something good.

He could start by helping her choose a name so that he didn’t have to keep calling her ‘kid’.

Kitty dragged him around gift shops and stationary shops and jewellery shops and sportswear shops, and he had to repeatedly remind her that she was shopping for Piotr.

“Not to presume anything about the Big Guy,” he said, “but somehow that I doubt he’d appreciate a necklace that brings out the brown in your eyes as much as you would.”

Kitty laughed and restored the necklace to its place on the shelf. “He should appreciate it. After all, he’d be lucky to have me.”

“He sure would, pun’kin,” he ruffled her hair. Wouldn’t be long until he was reaching _up_ to do that.

“Hey, stop that!” she protested. “My hair…”

“It looks better when it seems like you’ve been wrestling a bush,” he said.

“Ugh, Logan,” she groaned. “I swear it’s your goal in life to make me as publicly embarrassed as possible.”

He shrugged. “Well, that’s what f…riends are for.”

She’d moved her attention to the next section of the shop, full of hand-knitted things in various patterns and colours. She didn’t notice his slip. She didn’t notice that he had almost said _fathers_.

Kitty had a father. Logan wasn’t her dad. Just her teacher – her friend. One of many carers. She was family, sure, but…

He ran a hand through his hair. _Oh, shit_. He migrated to another part of the shop, trying to find himself a distraction. Tried not to think about why the phrase _Kitty isn’t my kid_ struck him somewhere deep. That shouldn’t mean anything. It was a fact – a truth he’d known since the beginning. Adamantly stated, in fact.

When had he stopped believing it?

“Hey, Logan,” Kitty said, and there was a laugh in her voice. She held up a knitted hat, royal blue, with a maze-like pattern brimming it. “Can you imagine Piotr wearing this? In his metal form, all stern and then… Hey, are you okay?”

Logan hastily wiped his cheek. “Yeah. Yeah, s’nothing. How about this?” He held up something from the display in front of him – a photo album. Kitty came to stand beside him and scanned the table of albums. Some of them with fancy patterns on the borders, some with illustrations filling the gaps between captions, some plain and professional.

“You know, he has all those photos of his sister that he carries around,” he bluffed, marvelling at the coincidence. “Maybe he’d like somewhere nice to keep them.”

“That’s… perfect!” she exclaimed. She started comparing the designs, babbling about what she liked and what she didn’t. Eventually, she held up two and asked what he thought.

“I think it’s your call, kid,” he said. He was feeling numb. There was too much happening. Or, was it too little? When there was a lot happening, he could rely on adrenaline to get him through. He didn’t have to think about things. But now…

He watched Kitty excitedly explain the situation to the unfortunate, very tired-looking cashier who had only meant to be polite. He made an apologetic face. They looked a little too dead-inside to notice.

Soon afterword they were back in the Range Rover on their way back to the Institute. Kitty had started ranting, in great detail, about the dramas of the celebrity world, prompted by some poppy song that bled into all the others coming on the radio.

The crunch of gravel under the tires had barely settled when Kitty unfastened her seatbelt. Clutching the photo album she had chosen to her chest, she hopped out of the car, and prepared to sprint into the nearest wall – “Fuck doors,” she had once famously said – when she suddenly stopped.

Wondering what she was doing, Logan watched her zip around the car as he shut the door and clicked the lock. When she got close enough, she pecked him on the cheek (didn’t even have to go on her tiptoes to do it) and said, “Thanks, Wolvie. You’re the best.”

A little dumbfounded, he said, “Sure, kiddo.” She smiled at him, and then turned and ran through one of the games room windows.

His first stop was the attic. The steps were clunky, and the light took a few good flutters to decide to turn on, and everything was covered in dust. But to Jean’s credit, when she had organised the attic she had organised it well. It was easy, once he was up there, to find the boxes labelled ‘CAMPING’ and pull out a big, insulated parka. He didn’t have to dig too much to find the water canteen that could clip onto the jacket, either.

The next stop was the laundry room. There was a cupboard full of clothes that had been grown out of, waiting to be claimed by someone new. He pulled out items at a time and tried to remember how small the kid had looked. There were a couple of plain tshirts, and one with an extremely faded print on the front, now indecipherable. He found a pair cargo pants that he remembered Rogue complaining about growing out of. They looked a little on the big side, but at least they looked like they would fit better than the pair of skinny jeans that were permanently stained in mud at the knees, previously owned my someone who was apparently all leg.

On his way to his bedroom, he passed Scott in the hallway.

“Planning a trip, Logan?” he asked.

“Could be,” he said as he kept walking, hoping that he wouldn’t look to closely at exactly what he was ‘packing’.

He ventured into the library next. Rahne was already in there, taking notes at one of the tables, and Bobby was playing Pong on one of the computers. Neither of the kids looked at him as he came in. He started scanning the shelves, but he didn’t have much hope. He couldn’t think of a reason that the Professor would have a book of baby names, but he also didn’t much fancy tackling the internet for a list.

He was stubborn for a stretch of time that felt a lot longer than it was. And then he relented and turned on one of the computers.

“Woah, Logan. Logging on to catch some dank memes?” Bobby glanced at him, and then lost his game of Pong through his grin.

“I have no idea what that means,” Logan said tiredly.

“I would be delighted to show you,” he looked ecstatic that Logan had given him an opening like that, but only laughed when he shot down his offer.

It turned out it didn’t take a computer genius to type some words into a search bar. It might take one to figure out how to print the results, though. He was trying to keep his cursing under his breath, but by the time he sucked up enough of his pride to ask Bobby or Rahne for help, they had left the library. Rogue walked past the archway that led into the room, and caught the distressed look on his face before he could turn away.

“You alright there, old man?” she teased, and made her way over to the console.

“I need to print this,” he gestured at the screen.

She leaned over his shoulder, keeping her gloved hands on her knees. “’200 most common baby names’?” she asked. “Something you’re not telling us, Logan?”

 _You have no idea_. “That Rasputina keeps asking for American names for those stories she writes. Her brother got so desperate for new ideas that he started looking around the room at the furniture,” he said. The ease with which the lie came off his tongue shouldn’t have surprised him – after all, that was almost all truthful.

“Aww, that’s sweet,” she cooed, and pointed at the screen to direct him. “Click here.”

“Just want to stop the brat’s whining, is all,” he said. She kept pointing, and he kept clicking.

“Uh-huh, likely story,” she said. “Now here. ‘Print’, see?”

“Thanks, darlin’.”

“Not a problem, Old Timer. You need any help figuring out the off button, you give me a shout,” she grinned, and made for the door.

“The what?” he asked, and she laughed. He printed off a second copy of the list and scrawled ‘MAGIK - FOR YOUR STORIES’ at the top. He left it in the games room, and folded the other into his pocket. Just to keep his cover, nothing more.

Nothing more.


	2. Chapter 2

Dinner was never a quiet affair in this house.

There was always chatter among teenagers; they never ran out of inane things to talk about. This wasn’t a bad thing, unless Theresa felt she wasn’t being heard, in which case she had been known to accidentally start using her sonic scream.

“Could you pass the carrots, please, Kitty?” Kurt requested. He had long since been banned from teleporting across the room to retrieve things, on multiple accounts (it’s bad manners, it’s loud, you create clouds of sulphurous gas that stink up the dining room…).

Hank had started explaining some kind of idea he had for a simulation in the Danger Room, but as often happened when he began explaining things, he had become sidetracked and was now talking about something completely different that Logan could only pretend to follow.

It was easy enough to immerse himself in the thoughts being presented to him. He listened to Bobby complain about the warm weather making his ice structures melt. He listened to Charles remind everyone that they had to look after the garden while Storm was away, with a pointed look at Bobby.

He listened to Kitty ask Piotr how he planned to celebrate his birthday this year, and Piotr very good-naturedly explaining his favourite traditions while not bursting her bubble that she was never going to be anything other than a little sister to him.

Piotr had once asked if Logan could explain this to her, because she might actually listen to him.

“She absolutely won’t, bub,” he’d replied. He was distinctly remembering the time when it didn’t matter how many times he said ‘He can’t be cheating on you if you’re not dating’, she would not be consoled. “But she’s a teenager doing teenage stuff. She’ll grow out of it, trust me. And besides, it’s not like she’s ever going to have the stones to ask you out.”

He was almost completely sure of this. Based on experience.

They made it through dinner without any sonic-based incidents. Kurt popped out immediately, and Kitty made a slightly exaggerated “Ugh” noise and pinched her nose.

“If he’s trying to keep the Playstation all to himself again, he’s dead,” Bobby said, steely serious, and marched from the room.

“Cannonball. You and me are on cleanup, come on,” Logan said.

“Aw, man!” Sam whined. “But the Die Hard movie marathon starts at 7, and it’s already ten-to…”

“It’s twenty-to, Sammy. And it means you better work fast, right?”

Sam caught on Theresa’s sleeve as she made for the dining room door. “Terry, gimme a hand? Please?”

She laughed and pulled herself free, “Sorry, mate. You’re on your own.”

“You guys are the worst!” he called, and Rahne flipped the bird at him. Logan pretended not to notice while he stacked the plates from the dining table.

“You need a hand, Logan?” Jean offered, floating a couple of the plates into his arm’s reach.

“That’s alright, Red. Me and the Beanstalk’ve got it,” he said. He didn’t want to risk close quarters with any of the telepaths in the house right now. And besides, it was worth it for the look on Sam’s face when he realised Logan had just turned away potentially the most helpful teammate for washing the dishes.

“Hey, you smash those plates and I’ll make you pick up all the pieces,” Logan warned, when Sam tried to jog into the kitchen with a stack of crockery. “Then you’ll definitely be late.”

He grumbled, but slowed down. He set to work scraping the plates off into the bin and slotting them into the dishwasher

“Hope you’re packing everything tightly in there.” Logan was having a particularly tough battle with a hotpot dish that didn’t go in the dishwasher. He’d been scrubbing for about as long as Sam had been struggling to get all the glasses to fit without anything breaking.

“I am,” he snapped, taking another anxious glance at the clock. The closer the minute hand crawled to the 12, the more anxious glances he made.

Logan sighed. The kid was very nearly done with the washer – just two more plates and then turning it on. But he was so distracted by the clock showing 6:58, that he wasn’t sure he would even manage to get that done.

“Alright, kid. I’ve got it from here, go watch your movie.”

Sam lit up like a firework. “Really?” He was bouncing on the balls of his toes.

“Scram before I change my mind,” he said.

“All-right!” he pumped the air and ran from the room, flinging the door a little too hard so that it bounced on the stopper. From down the hall, Logan heard him yell, “If you guys are hogging the TV, I’m gonna destroy you!”

Damn. He was getting soft, wasn’t he? He finished loading the dishwasher and turned it on – thirty seconds work, if the kid had stopped worrying about it – and dried his hands. He dug around in the cupboards until he found a decently-sized Tupperware to put all the leftovers he’d collected in. He plucked a couple of pieces of fruit from the bowl too, for good measure.

When he shut the door to the kitchen, he could hear Sam and the other kids talking loudly in the lounge – they weren’t arguing, he didn’t think. They were just being noisy.

He thought about the quiet little girl in the woods without a name. He wondered if she’d ever feel safe enough to make a racket like that.

He climbed the stairs and opened the door to his room. For a moment, he just stared at the duffel back, crammed with clothes. This was crazy. This wasn’t going to be sustainable, just hiking out to the woods every day or two to check on the kid. She needed somewhere to stay, somewhere real. Somewhere that wasn’t here.

He stuffed the Tupperware into the bag and checked off everything in his mind. Clothes. Water canteen. Food. Names. He felt like there should be more. That he should be doing more.

Baby steps. Just focus on one thing at a time. His own advice to Kitty sounded patronising in his head.

He slung the duffel over his shoulder and made his way out of the house. He diverted his route to avoid running into Jean, and managed to get to the front gate without anyone spotting him. Once he was on the road, he could finally exhale.

He'd been fending off his thoughts all day. Beating back the nightmares that had come at him with renewed vigour as he was reminded of what these people could do, would do, did.

She’s a kid. She’s just a kid.

He had been enough of an idiot to join the program on purpose. To be coaxed in, to stay. He was so much of a sucker that they kept trying to do it again. That now they had brought an innocent life into existence and made her suffer.

If he’d fought back sooner. If he’d fought back better…

He reached the parking spot where he could still see the tracks his motorcycle had left the night before. No use dwelling on what could have been. He had to move forward. He had to help this kid in any way he could. That was the only part of this situation he had any control over at all.

He hitched the duffel on his shoulder and took a deep breath of piney air. He tried to release all the tension that had built up inside him over the last 24 hours. The earth soaked up his footsteps and redistributed them, into the roots of trees and the burrows of creatures.

When he got to the remains of the campfire, he was calm. He couldn’t smell the kid anywhere close, so he sat down, legs crossed, and waited. The sun was tilting closer to the horizon, and moths were starting to flutter around in the warm evening air.

There was wildlife trotting around all over. He didn’t try too hard to see them, but he could hear the bracken snapping underfoot, the chittering of animals among their own. And he could smell them, weaving paths of scent when they brushed against the flora and left behind their business.

A curious young stag came over to him, unsure what to make of him. Certainly he would smell different from other humans, and he had a hunch that the ones that came through here acted different too. The stag sniffed at his hands in his lap, his most peculiar feature of all.

“You haven’t happened to see another Wolverine around these parts, have you?” he asked in a low, quiet voice. The stag tweaked his ears at him, and looked at him with a beady eye.

Both Logan and the buck felt it at the same time; the snap of a branch, and the presence of something with sharp claws. The stag might not have known what Logan was, but he knew what to do when something sharp was hiding above him. He took off, but Logan stayed seated.

“You’re not stuck up there, right?” he asked.

There was a scraping of bark, and the kid landed gracefully in front of him. Maybe it was the daylight, or that she was no longer looming above him with her claws to his throat, but she seemed a hell of a lot smaller than she had the day before.

“This is for you,” he pointed at the duffel bag. “It’s clothes, and a water canteen. And some food. Not much, just leftovers. I can get more next time.”

Wary, she unzipped the duffel and pushed the contents around a bit, looking. “I don’t need this,” she said.

“I know,” he replied. “But it might make things easier.”

“This will affect my mobility,” she tugged at the corner of the parka.

“But it’ll keep you warm, when you need it.”

She sat down beside the duffel and opened the box of leftovers and fruit. She bit into a bread roll, tentatively at first, and then with more confidence.

He tried not to stare at her; she’d probably had enough of that. He turned his attention back towards the forest. They were just part of the ecosystem, blending in seamlessly with everything else, save perhaps for the metal on their bones.

“You did not have to come,” she said, suddenly.

He glanced at her box of food. All that was left was a pear, which had had a bite taken out of it, and then been abandoned. “I said I would,” he answered.

“You didn’t have to say that.”

“But I did.” He looked at his hands. They were soldier’s hands, but it should have shown much more prominently than it did. He should have had long, pale scars older than the kid in front of him. He should have been blistered so much that his fingers had an exoskeleton. Should have been burdened with arthritis, probably. These were the hands of a man much younger than him. And he had eyes much older than that.

“You want to take me back to your X-Men,” she said.

She didn’t ask questions. She made assumptions. Made her seem more sure of herself.

“No. I don’t. But I don’t want to leave you out here, either.”

“I am fine out here.” She sounded defensive. As if he were doubting her capabilities.

“But you ain’t good,” he replied. He met her eyes then. Her eyes looked bluer than they had, reflecting the twilight instead of the fire.

“I do not need your help,” she told him. Her voice was cold, like the chill that was starting to take over now that the sun had dipped below the horizon. The eyes that were staring him down looked leagues beyond the years contained in her hands.

As he stood, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it and held it out to the kid. “Here. If you don’t like any of those – well, I’m sure I can figure out how to get some more.”

She took the list and started to scan it. “Are these targets?” she asked.

His stomach flipped. Fighting to keep his voice neutral, he said, “They’re names. For you. If you want one.”

“Oh,” she said, and set her eyes to the page again.

She didn’t look like she was going to say anything else. He retrieved the Tupperware box – in which was still the rejected pear – and brushed off his jeans. He started to walk away from the campfire, back in the direction of the road.

He looked up at the canopy above him, starting to sink into deep shadow. He had a selfish wish growing in his heart that there was someone still out there that he could punish for making that girl look at a list of names and see a ledger waiting to be bloodied.

When Logan got back to the Institute, he went straight to the Danger Room. It was still before midnight, so most of the kids were still awake. In fact, Kitty and Theresa had taken to doing “in-house clubbing” on Saturday nights, and as such the mansion’s whole ground floor was pulsing with music. He could still feel the vibrations and hear the bass, even down here.

“Beta training sequence, start.”

He punched his feelings. The anger, the confusion, the despair, all of it, all rolled up into a rubber band ball of tension, and he let it loose on the simulations in the Danger Room.

Punch. Kick. Slice. Going through the motions.

He was sloppy. He kept getting caught, kept forgetting his blindspots. If he healed normally he’d have had a few good bruises the next morning. He wasn’t this clumsy on missions. Was he?

He got into the swing of it. Started mowing down the simulations, and when they fell they flickered out of existence.

He sliced a dummy into ribbons. _That’s for experimenting on me._

He dismembered a faceless member of the Brotherhood. _That’s for making me forget about it._

He smashed two of the outmatched soldiers together, shattering both of their skulls. _That’s for cloning me and making her suffer._

He smelled blood. The Danger Room had started adapting its environment, stretching into plain-walled corridors with red lights pulsing at floor-level. It was turning into a maze.

“End simulation,” he said. He hadn’t meant to hit this command line when he was setting up the program. The Room ignored his demand. He raised his voice, “End simulation, now!”

“He’s this way!” came a voice, a straight-backed soldier with orders and a death wish.

He could hear the faint _pap, pap_ of the blood dripping from his knuckles hitting the floor. He could hear the thrum of the lights, the beat of soldiers’ boots. He could hear a snarl rising in his own throat as he stooped to greet the oncoming party.

“There he is! Open fire!”

The world flashed white; he leapt. Bullets grazed him, some hit him, but none stopped him from coming at the soldiers. Some tried to back up before they fell from where they stood, others held their ground but screamed with their last breath nonetheless.

Logan felt the blood hot on his skin, felt it evaporating and filling the air with the stench of lymph and haemoglobin. Nothing ever smelled dead to Weapon X. It was dead too quick and then he was gone.

He hacked at them without seeing their faces. Eventually without hearing their screams. His heart pumped, hard and fast and without mercy.

And then there was quiet. Once the last gunshots faded, the last laboured breaths were breathed, the last twitches of the fingers stilled. There was just the thrum of the lights. And the _pap, pap_ of blood on the floor.

“No,” he said, looking at his hands. Gleaming razors, dripping red. “Wait. No. I…”

He looked at the faces of the soldiers and felt a blow to the gut, sent stumbling back.

“Kitty… No. Stop. Stop the simulation.” Rogue. Cyclops. Jean. Storm. “No. Stop it, **stop it!** ”

He held onto his temples with the heels of his hands. His claws wouldn’t go back in. Kurt. Hank. He dropped to his knees. “This isn't real. They weren't here. _I'm not here._ ”

He heard footsteps. He couldn’t look. He couldn’t move. He was bent double with his nose on the ground, tremouring, holding his head, claws aching in their joints. They refused to retract, while his brain screamed _You’re in danger!_

“Stop it. Get me out. **Get me out!** ”

He heard another voice. A voice he knew from a long time ago, that he’d heard through glass and water and walkie-talkies until eventually he’d made it stop.

“Well done, Weapon X. You did exactly what you were designed for. Now, X-23… finish him off.”

He was frozen. His arms were blocking his vision, but he could hear the quiet taps of her shoes on the concrete. He heard the _snikt_ of her claw pushing through the toe of her boot.

He closed his eyes and shook. Shook against the cold floor, clutching his head, and breathed his last.

He kept breathing. Slow and steady. He eased himself back into the real world piece by piece, slipped his claws back into his forearms millimetre by millimetre. He breathed. His heart kept pumping like a locomotive.

Kitty was running towards him at full speed. “Logan!”

“Stop,” he held his hand out and she faltered, slowing to a halt. The back of his hand was completely devoid of blood. “You don’t want to come any closer than that, Half-Pint.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said, “Let me help you—“

“Stay there!” he barked.

There was fear in her eyes. Of him? For him? He couldn’t tell.

A buzzer sounded, and the doors to the room slid open with a whoosh.

“Logan, are you alright?” Jean asked, jogging over.

“I’m fine,” he growled. “Don’t come any closer.” He got to his feet and clenched his fists to hide the shaking. “What are you gawking at?”

Kitty and Jean exchanged a glance. “You were screaming, Logan,” Jean said. “Psychically. It was… loud.”

“To drown out that music you were blasting, it would have to be.”

“Logan,” Kitty was leaning towards him. Any closer and he would have to warn her again. “Seriously, what’s wrong? You’re scaring me.”

There was a _BAMF_ sound and a puff of purple smoke on his eight o clock, and he startled. “Jesus, Elf, are you trying to get cut to pieces?” he scowled.

Kurt raised his hands in surrender. “Sorry! Hey, let’s get you to the infirmary, okay? Doctor Wagner is in the house.”

“Lay a hand on me and you’re losing it, bub,” he snapped. The path to the door was in between Kitty and Jean. He strode through the gap, feeling the tendons in his arms tense, but didn’t take his eyes off the exit. He felt something brush against the whirlwind that was currently occupying his brain, and he said, “Stay out of my head, Jeannie. I’m not in the mood for telepathic Connect 4.”

“Logan…” Kitty sounded so scared. It made the stabbing pain in his chest worse.

“Let him go, Kätzchen,” Kurt advised. “We can’t do anything if he won’t let us.”

The elevator doors at the end of the hall had just closed behind Charles. “Logan,” he said, “I’m glad you’re alright. You seemed quite distressed—“

“I’m fine, Chuck,” he insisted, and started up the stairs to the ground floor.

When he came into the foyer, he heard Sam’s voice behind him. “Woah, Wolverine, are you okay? Jean said—“

“False alarm. Go to bed, kids,” he cut him off, and he opened the front door without looking back.

He didn’t make it further than the edge of the woods before he had to collapse, quaking, on the arching root of a tree. He rested his head against the trunk and watched the lights in the mansion and took in deep, measured breaths.

He hadn’t noticed inside, but now that the night air was cooling him down, he realised that he was dripping with sweat. He closed his eyes. Sweat. Not blood. He’d worked up a sweat and caught the scent of his claws popping out. That was all.

Well, that wasn’t _all_. But it was some of it.

He felt his heart rate come down, slowly. He watched the kids turn out their bedroom lights as the adults sent them all to sleep. He’d lost track of time. What was it, midnight? Kitty and Terry’s domestic raves usually lasted much longer than that. To Charles’ disapproval, that was.

It had been an eventful night. Maybe Charlie had taken the opportunity to insist that it was best for them all to get some sleep.

He wished he had a beer. That was what he needed right now. A nice, cold beer from the secret grown-up’s fridge.

“Little bit creepy, old man spying on a house full of kids like that,” Rogue said.

“You trying to give this old man a heart attack, darlin’? ‘Cause I might welcome the rest,” he replied. The night air was still; their voices carried easily.

She scaled the fence with the grace of someone who was aiming for effortless and was a couple good hours of practice away. She stuffed her hands in her hoodie pockets as she walked over to him. “Not what I heard. I heard you damn near took Kurt’s head off when he suggested you spend the night in the infirmary.”

“Yeah, well. You know how I feel about needles,” he said.

She gestured with her gloved hand to make him scoot over on the tree root. She had her big hoodie on, over her pajamas, and she was wearing her punkiest leather boots. They settled, and she watched the house with him. “What happened, Logan?”

He exhaled and shook his head. “Just some bad memories. That’s all.”

It wasn’t _all_. But it was part of it.

“Holy shmokes, you _are_ turnin’ into me,” she said, “The bad memories that make you go cuckoo, the not wantin’ to be touched – Hey, are you gonna get a white streak in your hair? Am I gonna develop an attitude problem?”

He fought the laugh, but not the smile. “How about you shove off, Stripes?”

“Nope, seems like your attitude is perfectly intact and in your possession. Damn.”

“And your snark hasn’t budged either. So I guess we’re our same old selves,” he said.

“Shame.”

“Mm.”

All of the lights in the house except the upstairs corridor had been turned off. Rogue took out a keychain torch a flashed it twice in the house’s direction. Before he could ask what she was doing, an identical flash responded from the second floor window third from the right.

“You starting a covert ops team?” Logan asked. “I want in.”

She laughed. “Kitty’s party got derailed, so she and Terry asked me to signal when the light in Professor McCoy’s study went out. They’re gonna watch a movie. You in?”

He knew Theresa and Kitty wouldn’t give up that easy. “Sure, why not?”

“All-riiight,” she grinned and hopped down from the tree root. “Wolverine in the picture house.”

“Sounds like one of those terrible comics you read.”

“You have no taste, Wolvie. No taste at all.”

\---

The paper was getting worn out by her thumbs. That had never happened before. She was used to getting crisp, sharp pieces of paper, covered in rigid lines of black ink letters.

This paper had been folded and unfolded many times. The edges were getting fuzzy and bendy. She didn’t even really need to look at it anymore, but she kept taking it out and staring.

At the top were two headings; ‘GIRLS’ and ‘BOYS’. Scrawled above the printed columns was a handwritten ‘COMMON FOR’. On her first glance, she had simply read the first name on the list: Abigail Adam. Or, as she would shortly after decipher, “Abigail” and then “Adam”. Two separate names. The first two options of a long, long list.

Weapon X— _Logan_ (Remember.)—had seemed angry with her when she asked if it was a list of targets. She hadn’t meant to upset him, she never meant to upset anyone. They just got angry.

At first she had thought it might be an exercise – some kind of test of her decision making. But he didn’t introduce any stakes. There was no wrong answer. So it seemed he had given her a choice.

There was a feeling ruminating right in the centre of her chest; like the big, oaken doors in Dr. Kinney’s fairytale book creaking open after a hundred long years. She could remember resting her head in Dr. Kinney’s lap as she described one of six fantasy lands that she already had memorised by heart.

Sometimes Dr. Kinney had let her stay in her lap. Other times she had made her sit up and they finished the story not quite touching. There was no pattern. She didn’t understand why sometimes she deserved it and sometimes she didn’t. She always did as she was told.

Mostly.

She had considered each name on the list carefully. Some of them had been easy to reject. Others she had thought about for long stretches of time. She would sit by the stream and see if it felt different to say a name there to how it did when she said it in a tree. She would say a name and then do a cartwheel and say it again. She would say a name so much that it sounded odd to her ears, and then she would decide to come back to it later.

The sun was streaming through the canopy for most of the day. She was sitting cross-legged by the burnt-out campfire, listening to the sound of the forest. The previous day, she had watched Logan sit in this spot and wait for her.

She didn’t understand why he didn’t care that she was a threat, like the buck did. She was dangerous; it was what she was made for.

But then, it was what he was made for, too. So maybe he had been right when he said that she didn’t have to be what the Facility trained her to be. Maybe there was something else she could become.

She rubbed her thumb on the page of names as she scanned it yet another time.

Approximately six metres away, a doe ducked her head under a bush and stared at her. Neither of them moved.

“What do you think of ‘Laura’?” she asked.

The deer tilted her head. Sneezed. And trotted away without a care in the world.


	3. Chapter 3

He looked again at the piece of paper he had torn out of one of Kitty’s thirteen spare notebooks. It had pink ruled lines and a puppy’s paw print in the corner. The numbers scribbled on the page in blue ink were less pleasant to look at.

He’d never particularly liked working with numbers. Especially not when it involved money, because it almost always meant he owed someone something.

He didn’t have a lot of options. That was what he was becoming more sure of.

“Logan, can I go to the restroom?” Sam asked.

Logan looked up from his desk. “You went to the restroom ten minutes ago.”

“But I really need to go,” he insisted. He was definitely playing up the act, crossing his legs awkwardly and putting on his best pained expression.

“You do know that you’re just gonna land yourself a second detention if you don’t finish that essay, right?” he said.

Suddenly Sam seemed a lot let desperate to pee.

“Bring it over here. What do you need help with?” Logan shoved the piece of paper he had in front of him under Illyana’s under-construction history project.

Theresa snickered as Sam got up, and Logan pointed a pen at her, “How about you, Cassidy, you almost done?” Her smile fell and she put her head down.

Sam sat down in the chair beside the desk and handed Logan his essay. Well. Calling it an essay at this point might have been a stretch. It was really only an introductory paragraph. “Okay,” Logan said, “where’s your essay plan?”

“Uhhhh…” Sam said.

Logan sighed. “The Professor did set you a plan for homework, right?”

“I… don’t remember?” he tried.

“Uh-huh. Sure you don’t.” He took a piece of lined paper from the drawer and a pen. “Okay. Make an outline.”

“Can’t you just make us write lines? Or run laps, or something?” he groaned.

“Neither of those things are going to help you turn in your English essay and pass your classes.”

“But I don’t _need_ to do that,” he said. “I’m gonna be an X-Man. You can’t fight crime with English essays.”

Logan tapped his pen on the page and then took out a new lined sheet of paper and copied out the essay question on the top line. “You’ll need a job, knucklehead, whether at this school or somewhere else. And superheroism doesn’t make for a very lucrative career. Trust me.”

Sam slumped back in his chair and crossed his arms. Logan placed the paper on his edge of the desk with the pen. “Break the question down into simple parts.”

It took some prompting, but by the time the clock struck 4:30, Sam had an essay plan.

“The Professor never explained it like that,” he grumbled. His cheeks were a little pink.

“Don’t worry about it, kid. Now you know what to do.” Logan was throwing his pens into their pot individually. He was trying to make an excuse for not getting up along with Sam, because he needed to retrieve his note from under Illyana’s project.

“How come you don’t teach any other classes?” he asked, hitching his bag onto his shoulder. “You’re better at explaining stuff than Sco—uhh, Mr. Summers.”

Logan chuckled, “I’ll do you a favour and not tell him you said that. It’s ‘cause, kid, I’m the best there is at what I do, and what I do best is teach P.E. to squirts like you.”

Logan swept a glance around the classroom before he left – it hadn’t had a chance to get messy, since the kids didn’t have history on Mondays. But you always had to be on the lookout for hastily-abandoned destruction in a house like this.

He tossed the apple from his desk into the air. Terry had meant it as a joke, he thought. Whether it was about Mr. Logan eating something *gasp* healthy, or Mr. Logan aka Wolverine somehow being a _teacher_ , he wasn’t sure.

To be fair, this wasn’t exactly what he had expected his profession to be while growing up, either.

_“You’re a soldier, Logan. Always have been, always will be.”_

He shut the classroom door.

The halls were empty this afternoon. Monday was a Danger Room day, and the kids that weren’t participating were watching.

“I don’t get why you like hockey so much,” Kitty had once said, chin in her hands.

“I’m Canadian,” he replied, “it’s in my blood.”

“But you just watch guys skating around on ice and hitting – stuff.” He had tried, so many times, to explain hockey to this girl. And yet she could still not remember the name of the puck. “That’s so boring,” she said.

“You watch the Ice Cube skate around on ice and hit stuff in the Danger Room,” he had pointed out.

“That’s different, though, Bobby’s powers are…”

He raised an eyebrow. She’d watched the hockey game with him. She still didn't understand the rules, but she actually kept asking questions. He'd gotten her invested. It had been a proud moment.

Normally he’d be heading down to the Danger Room himself, but he’d requested today off. Scott had grumbled about being down two instructors until Storm got back, but apparently had found Logan’s request reasonable enough. He wasn’t particularly enjoying the barely-concealed chatter about Wolverine’s Meltdown going around the school, but at least it provided him a decent cover for taking time off.

He went into the kitchen and started pulling ingredients for sandwiches out of the fridge and the cupboards. Bread. Cheese. Ham. Strawberry jam. He paused. A packet of salted chips.

He’d once walked into the kitchen after everyone else had gone to bed to find Bobby eating a chip sandwich and he’d immediately frozen in his seat. Apparently Charles had a strict rule about proper sandwich fillings and Ororo always made the most disappointed faces when he made questionable food-related choices.

“Actually… just choices in general,” he’d added.

Logan added the apple and took some other fruit from the bowl – not pears – and then threw in a couple of cookies (store bought, after Hank’s baking disaster).

The familiar chill of the garage greeted him when he got there, and he fished his keys out of his pocket. Most of the vehicles in the garage had at least one copy of the keys in a safe on the wall; not his motorcycle. The only other person allowed to ride it was Rogue, and that was under the condition that she would help him look after it.

The world felt quiet. With all the kids in the Danger Room, the grounds were like a different place, and he could picture it as the stately home of the Xavier family. Without the laughter in the hallways, the candy stashed in strategic places and forgotten about. The new scorch marks on the tennis court. The holographic death chamber made from alien tech in the basement. This place looked almost normal.

There was something just out of reach of his fingertips in his memory. A lifetime ago. A house like this.

Home.

He shook it loose. It was no good focusing on a past he couldn’t even scape together. He had a present; he had a home. And a family.

The ring of stones around the former-campfire was still intact, marking the spot. He sat down and took the box of sandwiches out of his backpack. He placed it on the ground with the lid open, took a cheese sandwich, and waited.

A bluejay came to investigate the sandwich situation before the kid did. It was doing almost a routine, taking two little hops forward and then one back again, and it kept glancing up at Logan chewing his sandwich, expecting him to scare it away.

When the kid appeared from behind a tree and walked towards the campfire, the jay seemed to decide it was not in good odds and took off. The kid sat down on the other side of the sandwich box, facing Logan. She watched him.

“You hungry?” he offered the box.

She still seemed unsure. She reached for a ham sandwich, flicking a glance up at him, and then took it. She held it for a moment, and then took a small bite.

Logan put the box down. “How you doing, kid?” he asked.

Her brow creased into a frown and her eyes fell from his. She took another bite. He took another sandwich. The bluejay was watching jealously.

“Laura,” she said suddenly. Hopeful, green eyes.

He noticed that she was fidgeting with something in her pocket – a piece of paper, maybe. “It’s nice to meet you, Laura.”

She seemed confused, for a moment. Then she seemed to get it. “It is nice to meet you too, Logan.”

Her smile was something else. It was tiny, really, just a slight curve of the lips, but it packed a punch. That smile threw a light into her eyes. It made her shoulders relax just a little bit, made her more sure of herself. It made the sun shine brighter, the woods seem more alive.

He wanted this kid to be able to smile as much as she possibly could.

She picked up a chip sandwich. When she felt the crunch, she looked startled, but seemed to consider it for a moment, chewing. When she finished it, she lifted the corners of the other sandwiches in the box until she found the other one and chose it.

“Would you like to live with me, Laura?” he asked.

She looked up. “With the X-Men.”

“No. Just with me. Some of the time – you would be on your own a lot, too.”

She took her time to think about it. “No.”

Oh. His shoulders sagged. He’d known it was a possibility, but he’d hoped she might say yes. She could make it on her own, he was sure, but she would be vulnerable out there, and she knew how to defend herself physically but the other stuff was another matter…

“It’s too dangerous,” she added.

He looked up. “What do you mean?”

“There are people pursuing me,” she said. It was just a fact to her; she said it as casually as she might say it was going to rain. “They could find me if I’m around other people. And then they could get hurt.”

It explained her reluctance to join the X-Men a little better, anyway. “I thought you took care of those people.”

She drew into herself a little, cast her eyes down. “Not all of them. Kimura cannot be killed.”

“Everyone can be killed.” Immortality was never quite as immortal as anyone thought. Seemed like it, sometimes, when the years dragged on and wrinkles barely even scarred his face. But everyone died sometime.

She shook her head.

“She heals?”

Another shake of the head.

“Then what? Is she quick?”

“She is indestructible.”

Unbreakable skin. They’d found somebody that adamantium couldn’t cut through. This Kimura had probably been her handler, then, the one who got close enough to cut her hair and “discipline” her.

“Does she breathe?”

Laura looked up. Frowning, she nodded.

“Then we suffocate her.” The words came out harsh and cast a shadow on the forest floor. They were the words of a killer. The words of a weapon.

Her brow furrowed deeper as she looked away. There was an anger in her eyes that he recognised. He had seen it on Sam just an hour ago. _‘Why didn’t I think of that?’_

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you,” he said. His voice was still grave.

“It is what I was made for,” she said. A failure was a failure, whether she wanted to succeed or not.

_I’m the best there is at what I do. And what I do best isn’t very nice._

He remembered what it was like.

“Not if you don’t want it to be, Laura.” Her eyes met his at the mention of her name. “No one gets to decide what your purpose is except you.”

That prospect seemed a little scary to her. He remembered what that was like, too. “We’ll take care of Kimura if she finds us,” he said. “So, with that in mind…”

“You do not understand,” she said. His heart sank again. “It is not that simple. The Facility – it—they developed a scent. The trigger scent. When I smell it, everything goes black. And—and when I wake up… everything is dead.”

There was a pang of dread in his chest.

They’d made a mistake on him. They’d made the perfect killing machine – but they couldn’t direct it. It had too much independence – its targets were determined by how much of a threat was perceived. And when it had figured out that the people controlling it were threats…

With the next attempt they’d caught on. Laura’s rages weren’t something internal for her, some beast she had to fight back and reign in; it was external. It was completely and utterly out of her control.

“I won’t let you hurt anyone,” he said. It was a bold promise to make. “If you’re with me, I can decrease the risk of anyone getting injured.” Injured permanently, anyway. If he had to take every hit himself, that would be fine. The kid wouldn’t even remember doing it.

He wasn’t sure she was going to believe him. She was being asked to disregard the truths that she had been told her whole life – that she was powerless, that she was inherently destructive, that she deserved less than anybody else.

“Okay,” she said.

His heart was aching with relief, and joy, and sadness, and guilt. He had to keep his promise. He had to keep her safe. “Okay. I’ll—I’ll get it sorted out.” He needed somewhere to put his eyes, so he reached back into his bag and pulled out the fruit and cookies.

She looked intrigued by the cookie, and turned it over in her hands. Another experimental nibble, and then a wide-eyed glance up, communicating _Have you tried this shit?_ He grinned.

Once she had devoured both of the cookies, he looked at his watch. It was almost 5:15 – the kids would be done with the Danger Room soon. When he got to his feet, Laura tried to offer him the box of leftover sandwiches and fruit.

“Nah, kid, it’s yours. I’ll be back in a couple days with a refill. Or a different box.” He’d figure out a system. This was only a temporary arrangement, anyway. The kid was going to be living with him.

She was going to be _living with him._

He’d figure out a system for that too. Hopefully.

When he got back to the house, the kids were just coming out of the Danger Room. Bobby was holding an icy hand to his eye, looking somewhat miserable.

“Don’t tell me the X-Babies beat your ass again, Snowman?” Logan said pityingly.

“We’re not babies,” Roberto crossed his arms. “And he ran into a pole.”

“It came outta nowhere!” Bobby threw his free arm up. He’d definitely said that phrase at least four times already; Logan could tell from his tone and Scott rolling his eyes.

“Good job, sport,” he said. “I bet the world feels safer already.”

Bobby stuck his middle finger up and stalked away to somewhere he would feel less targeted.

Piotr sighed and shook his head. “He gets too cocky now that he is X-Man,” he said.

“No, he’s always been like that,” Scott replied. “Actually, worse.”

“Alright, children, it’s time to start preparing dinner,” Charles announced, having come out of his office. “Bobby, Jean, and Roberto, I believe you three are on food duty. Kurt and Rahne, you two on table duty, please.”

Roberto raised his hand. “Bobby hit his head off a pole,” he reminded everyone. A distant ‘Ugh!’ could be heard from down the hall.

“Ah, yes, so he did,” Charles frowned. “Well, any volunteers to take his place for tonight?”

“I think Logan should do it, if he’s going to skip out on training,” Kurt suggested good-naturedly, crossing his arms and flashing Logan a grin.

“Any objections, Logan?” he asked.

He shrugged, “Guess not. Long as I don’t have to listen to any of Berto’s yammering about soccer.”

“It’s football,” Roberto insisted for the millionth time. “And I know you know that.”

In the kitchen, they divvied up the tasks. Logan was set to work peeling potatoes. Jean quickly implemented the rule ‘No powers in the kitchen’ - mostly for Roberto, probably, but there was a possibility she was also remembering the time she had seen Logan make a meal for himself using only his claws and a frying pan as tools.

 _\--Are you alright, Logan?--_ she asked him, once they had got going.

 _\--No powers in the kitchen,--_ he thought.

She ignored his comment. _-–I’ve never known you to skip training time unless things were serious.--_

_\--I’m fine, Jeannie.—_

She severed the exchange. If she really wanted to, she could dig deeper, pushing past his mental barricade and into his thoughts. But besides just being a rude thing to do, she had learned it was best to avoid going into his head if at all possible. She had once described it as having “structural damage”. That was the kid-friendly version.

“Can I not even warm the plates?” Roberto asked, hand beginning to glow red in hopeful anticipation.

Jean and Logan answered in unison. “ _ **No.**_ ”

\---

Laura awoke to a sort of hammering noise. She sat up sharply, ready to strike, and there was a flutter of feathers that was out of her sight before she could identify it.

The bird had been pecking at the corner of her clear plastic box, which had been dragged out of the duffel by some means or other. She snapped the lid back on tight and placed it back in the bag, zipping it up. Either the squirrels were getting ingenious, or she’d forgotten to close it.

Dumb mistake. She was starting to get relaxed here. That was even dumber.

“Don’t you know better than to let your guard down anywhere, X?” she could heal Kimura snarling. “You’re even more pathetic than I thought.”

The sun was already beating into the forest, and now that it was light, she couldn’t sleep again. She unzipped the parka and threw it on top of the duffel bag, and walked the short distance to the stream.

Maybe she should move on. Find some city where it would be easy to slip around places unnoticed. More places to shoplift from than the little town she passed on the way to this patch of woods, at the least.

A week ago it wouldn’t have been a question. She’d be out of here already, no one would even see the faintest of tracks by now. But she had told Logan that she would stay.

“Awww,” the Kimura in her head cooed. “The puppet found someone new to tug on its strings.”

“I am not a puppet,” Laura said, out loud. She was staring at her reflection in the water, distorted by the way it hurried over the stones in it.

“You’ll always be a puppet, X-23. There are no magic fairies that will turn you into a real girl.”

She reached down and filled the canteen with water. “You are wrong,” she said forcefully.

“Then prove it,” Kimura seemed to grin out of the water. She was always watching, behind mirrors and screens. “Prove you’re not a puppet. Break your promise. Run away.”

It would be safer, on her own. The less people knew where she was, the less ways there were for the Facility to find her. And the less people she had to lose.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Kinney had whispered, with red staining her tongue and her eyes and the snow beneath her. “I’m sorry…”

Puppet on a string. She had killed for the Facility. She had killed for Dr. Kinney. How long before she killed for Logan?

“You were made to be a killer, X-23. It’s all anybody is ever going to need you for.”

The clothes in the duffel bag covered up her all-in-one fine, but it was going to be too warm for that many layers. She shed it like a snakeskin, and dragged it into the water with her. She sat down in the stream and let the cold water make tiny breaks against her back as if she were a rock.

This was not like her washes at the Facility. There she was pelted with water from a hose until the blood and dirt was scrubbed from her skin. This water was mossy, and full of pebbles, and flowed at its own pace.

She splashed water over her head. Her hair was getting bristly, like the ends of a brush. She’d never had a brush of her own.

She stood up and shook herself, draping her suit over a low-hanging branch and walking up and down the bank while she dried off, listening to the woods. Some of the animals were starting out their days, too, and others were ending them. It was an ever-harmonious buzz, and if she concentrated, she could surround herself in the sound.

She picked out clothes from the duffel bag, which had lost any hope of neatness it had ever had. She’d tried the cargo pants on before, and they trailed by her feet, collecting mud. This time when she put them on, she rolled up the ends. She pulled on a new t-shirt, too. This one was bigger, and said ‘California Springs’ on it.

She took out the box of sandwiches and ate the last two as she walked in the direction of the road, duffel over her shoulder. It was a long walk to North Salem, but it was nothing like the journey she’d made to get here. She’d stowed away where she could, but she didn’t talk to anyone, so she had ended up doing a lot of walking. It wasn’t as if she missed it, but it was safer than staying here.

Anyone who offered a ride could be from the Facility. If not, they might report a little girl hitchhiking by herself, and then the Facility would find her anyway. They wouldn’t let her get away a second time.

And there wouldn’t be anyone to read her stories.

She arrived at North Salem when the sun was passing directly overhead. There was a group of children exiting a store off the square, and a boy with spiked brown hair was walking backwards, waving his ice cream in his hand as he chatted animatedly to his two friends.

Laura watched the ice cream start to drip onto his hand, and he caught her eye. He frowned, and said, “What are you staring at?”

His friends turned to look, and at the same time with a plop his ice cream dropped off the cone and onto the concrete. Suddenly preoccupied by the casualty and his friends laughing, Laura walked into the store without being noticed by the children.

The shop attendant was talking to a customer behind the counter. She meandered through the store until she found everything she wanted, but picked none of it off the shelves. As she passed a sunglass stand at the end of one of the aisles, she knocked it with her hand, and it crashed to the floor.

“Hey, watch it, kid!” the cashier exclaimed. The shop was empty now, and he walked around the counter to address the stand while Laura ducked down the next aisle with a short, quiet apology.

While he straightened the stand, muttering to himself, she remade her route around the store and swept the food off the shelves, not stopping once. The bell sounded on her way out the door, and she kept walking. If she acted like she had done nothing wrong, then she hadn’t. People were easy to fool like that.

There was a fountain in the square that wasn’t running. When she sat down on the edge of it, she could see the forgotten, grimy pennies at the bottom. Pigeons were dotted around the square, hoping to scavenge some food from the people eating their lunch.

She started to name them. The energetic one that kept running back and forth between possible donors was Lucas. The one with the ruffled feathers was Emily. The one that just followed Emily around was Janie. The one that was sitting on a TV aerial and cooing occasionally was Max.

Lucas tilted his head hopefully at Laura. She stared at him until he gave up and went to bother somebody else. The clock tower in the square struck one and played a tune. She watched the three children from before run across the square.

“Why didn’t you say you had student council today?” one of them yelled, puffing.

“Shut up, Rudy!” replied another.

Laura tossed the half-eaten tomato she had picked out of her sandwich at Emily and hitched the duffel bag onto her shoulder. She followed in the footsteps of the other children by scent, and picked up other aromas too; cut grass, plastic in the sun, chimney smoke.

The destination of the group became obvious. There was a sign pointing west that read “North Salem Middle School”, and they had already rounded the corner that would lead to it. But she didn’t follow them any further - instead she stood in front of a gate that was posted with the sign “Little Pirates’ Cove”.

The park wasn’t empty. There were toddlers on the swings, being pushed by chatting parents. There was a tall slide being occupied by people skipping class and smoking cigarettes. But no one was standing in the feature for which the park was named; the gigantic boat grounded on soft wood shavings, proudly sporting a drooping Jolly Roger flag.

She opened the gate to the park and boarded the ship. There was a wheel on the platform at the back, which you could only get to by climbing a four-foot climbing wall or a rope ladder. Below it was a room housing a tic-tac-toe game, which had been abandoned half-finished. She flipped over a tile so that noughts won the round.

There were two cannons on either side of the ship that fired nothing, and a diving plank that only stood three feet from the ground. There was no way to get to the crow’s nest at the top of the sail-less flagpole.

This ship hadn’t been built with accuracy in mind.

From her position on the steering deck, she heard the elementary schoolers stampeding their way to the park before she saw them. Some made a beeline straight for the ship, ducking into the ‘map room’ under the deck or manning the cannons against imaginary enemies.

A little girl in pigtails struggled her way to the steering deck, and when she saw Laura, seemed scandalised that somebody would take her spot. “I want to be captain!” she declared.

Laura wasn’t stopping her from being captain – she was just sitting on her duffel bag in the corner. But the girl seemed to be taking this as a direct challenge to her authority and began to wail, red-faced. Parents looked around to investigate, and Laura vaulted over the side of the ship.

The monkey bars were unoccupied, so she swung herself onto them and pulled up until she could sit on the rungs.

“How’d you do that?” asked a blue-shirted boy in wonder, looking up at her.

She just stared at him. He climbed onto the ladder rungs and then gripped onto the bars, pursing his lips in concentration. He swung free, but he could only hold on with his hands for a second before he dropped down. He walked around and tried again with the same result.

She was supposed to be leaving. That was what she had set out to do. So why was she wasting time sitting in a playpark being harassed by little children? If she had set off earlier, she could be in the next town over already.

“Puppet’s reached the end of its string,” Kimura goaded. “No more free will for the day.”

She jumped down from the monkey bars and started walking. North Salem was no longer in sight by the time the sunset was starting to streak the sky with colour, and she had no food left in her duffel bag.

The sign on the village’s border said “Valleyhill” which was a name chosen by someone who didn’t understand geological features. There were no convenience stores open late in a village this small, and the only glow came from the orange lampposts guarding the streets.

There was a set of rusty stairs leading up to a second floor door in an alley. She settled under them and brought the hood of her parka around her ears, using the duffel bag as a cushion.

The sound of garbage bags rustling permeated her doze, and she felt damp where she had been leaning against the wall and the ground.

“Oh, no. Oh man. Don’t be dead. Hey, uh… kid?”

Laura levered her eyes open a crack and saw a face looming in front of hers. A _snikt_ and her claws were unsheathed, and she pointed them in his direction with a snarl while she tried to get her bearings.

“Woah! Hey! No need for that—I was only—Oh Jesus.” He leapt back, hands up.

She pushed herself to her feet and sheathed her claws, taking in the world around her with her nose. Dew. Garbage. Fresh bread. Rat feces.

“You alright kid, you—you got someone looking after you, or…?”

He was still standing there. White apron, round bearded face. Why hadn’t he run away already? It didn’t matter. She grabbed the duffel by the handle and swung herself over the banister onto the steps, and used the platform at the top as a springboard to disappear onto the roof, leaving the man to his protests.

She looked out across the village, made up of houses in all different shapes and ages. She remembered why she was here – running away, being by herself. If she was going to be this sloppy about it, she might as well turn herself into the Facility now, just to save time.

“Hey kid, you still up there?” the man yelled from down below.

Did he have a death wish?

“I… I have something for you.”

Curiosity got the better of her. She peeked her head over the side of the roof. He was still standing in the alley, but now he was holding a loaf of crisp, golden bread. “Here!” he shouted, and threw it upwards like a football.

She caught it and held it in her hands, feeling the warmth of it, and realised she was freezing.

“You’re welcome,” he said, and he disappeared through the plain door that opened onto the alley.

Guilt spread through her like a poison. Logan had been helping her – bringing her food, clothes, equipment – just like he said he would. And she had run away. He was going to be so mad.

“You’ve never had any free will, X,” she taunted in her head. “You don’t know how to do it.”

She made the bread last until she reached North Salem, and then she just kept walking until she got back to the woods. The forest hadn’t noticed her disappearance, just carried on with its natural flow. She started to doubt her decision to come back.

When she reached the campfire, she saw new ashes in it. The smell of him was clinging to the bracken, lingering from long after the dew fell. She dumped the duffel bag on the forest floor and sat down. There was nowhere else for her to go.


	4. Chapter 4

“Logan, can’t we do something fun?” Bobby asked.

“You’re supposed to be one of the grown-ups, Snowman,” Logan replied. “Leave those questions to the kids.”

“Logan, can we do something fun?” Roberto echoed. Bobby gave him a high five.

“No.”

There was a collective groan. “But we did endurance training last week,” Theresa complained.

Logan sighed. “When are you kids going to get in through your heads? If you want to do well in the Danger Room and become X-Men, you need to be able to take care of your bodies.”

“At a normal school we’d just play dodgeball,” Sam said.

“You’re not _at_ —Ugh.” He didn’t have the energy to deal with this. “Fine. Split into even teams and go at it.”

There was a cheer from the kids and the not-quite-adults. Kurt popped to the shed to fetch the dodgeballs, and Scott grinned at Logan, “They wore you down quick this week.”

“They better not get used to it,” he grumbled and sat down on the bench at the edge of the green. He raised his voice to the kids while Jean tried to sort them into even teams, “No powers. I see any of you using your powers and you can come sit on the bench with me.”

“Aww, c’mon,” Bobby said, shoulders drooping. “You know the rule.”

The kids had a long-standing rule – it had been in effect since before Logan came to the school. If someone used their powers in a no-powers game, any witness had the right to call out “MUTANT DODGEBALL” or “MUTANT FRISBEE” or whatever the game happened to be, and from that point onward, all powers were on the table.

It made holding P.E. classes difficult.

“Not in the mood, Drake. No powers.”

Scott herded everyone onto the tennis court where the net was already up. On the split down the middle, Jean was setting up the balls with her mind as if it was easier than using her hands.

“He’s so grumpy today,” Kitty muttered to Rahne, and she shushed her. Rahne had good ears, like his – she probably figured that he could overhear them at this distance. She was right, but Logan was in too much of a bad mood to call Kitty out on it.

He was running on three hours of bad sleep and a constant state of anxiety. If it was just the exhaustion making his bones heavier that was the issue, he would have been fine. He’d had enough sleepless nights and lengthy missions to be used to that. But there was a fear gnawing at him, and at this rate even the people without telepathy would be able to figure out what it was.

He’d been stood up. And in this line of work that kind of thing never had an innocent reason. It could never be _I forgot I had other plans_ , or _There was traffic_ , or _There was just a really cute dog that I had to pet and I lost track of time._

He’d promised the kid he would protect her. That he wouldn’t let her get hurt. If he’d failed already – just by not being there... How could he ever look her in the eye and say he would keep her safe again?

There was another option: That she’d just left. She had changed her mind and decided to make her own way. The fact that that was the good option put a damper on his already miserable demeanour. She was capable, but she was vulnerable. He didn’t want her to fall into line with the first person who gave her an order.

Wasn’t that what he was doing? Maybe he was wrong about what she needed. Maybe being by herself was best.

No matter how many times he ran over this in his head, it didn’t stick.

“Kitty, watch out!” Roberto yelled.

Kitty yelped and clocked the dodgeball headed towards her when it was just inches away. It passed right through and bounced on the tennis court behind her.

Logan could hear the deep breath Bobby took in on the other side of the court and cut in before he could yell for Mutant Dodgeball. “Pryde, bench,” he said.

“Aww, man,” Bobby lamented. “But Mutant Dodgeball…”

“I said no,” Logan scowled.

“Wolver-Mean,” he pouted, swatting a dodgeball at the enemy team.

“Cry me a river, Frosty.”

Kitty sat by him on the bench. He expected a protest about how it was an accident, or how he was being unfair for undermining the only rule the occupants of the house stuck to without exception. Instead she sat quietly, tense, and stared at the game with glassy eyes.

He couldn’t take it as long as he would have liked to. “Alright, Half-Pint, spit it out. What’s eating ya?”

She sat on it for another second, and then she said in a low voice, “Do you think Piotr is going to like his birthday present?”

He looked again at her eyes. They weren’t totally glassy; it was just that she only had eyes for Piotr, who was reffing because his height gave him an unfair advantage in basically every game.

He sighed. “He’s gonna love it, kiddo. If not, I’ll beat him up for you.”

“Don’t do _that_ ,” she said quickly, seriously, and then seemed to realise it was a joke and loosened up. “You’re coming to the party, right?”

Friday was the Big Guy’s birthday. Tomorrow. “Uhh… I dunno, kid, we’ll see. I might have a prior engagement.”

“You might?” she asked.

“They might’ve cancelled on me. I’m not sure yet.” Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw. The anxiety wouldn’t go away.

“Oh… Okay.”

Roberto got clipped on the leg and left Theresa the only member of her team. Piotr blew the whistle for Sudden Death. Jean cleared all the balls off the court, leaving only two behind, dead centre, while Theresa and Bobby glared at each other with their hands hovering by their sides like they were duelling in an old western. Bobby’s black eye gleamed in the sun.

Piotr blew the whistle and they both dashed forward, grabbing a ball each and then retreating to the court line. As soon as Theresa’s foot was over the line, she twisted around and lobbed it at Bobby, and caught him right in the chest as he spun to throw his own ball.

“Woo hoo!” Terry cheered, and her team joined her.

“I call foul play!” Bobby shouted in vain, like the bad sportsman he was.

After P.E. class was dismissed, Logan found himself in the kitchen. There was still an unopened Tupperware box in the fridge from yesterday – he didn’t need to prepare anything new. When he stepped back into the corridor, he could distinctly hear the sound of a bunch of teenagers fighting over the best shower.

“Logan, could I have a moment?”

He felt like one of the kids caught bunking off class. He’d been paying so much attention to the row down the hall that he hadn’t heard Charles’ wheels on the carpet.

“Kinda busy, Chuck,” he said. He didn’t want to turn around. He wasn’t sure he could handle lying with his face and his brain at the same time, not in this state.

“Yes, so I gather,” he said, in the lighthearted tone that he’d swear blind didn’t mean _accusatory_. “But I had hoped that the Wolverine could spare some of his precious time to speak with a good friend.”

Yeah, this wasn’t a conversation he was getting out of. “Fine. What do you need?”

Charles gestured for him to follow him into his office.

Logan had been practicing keeping his brain cloudy around the school. It was easy enough to blend in with the noise of the rest of the dinner table, or fill his mind with the house’s mindless chatter, or whatever Siryn had left on the radio in the other room, or a vague, unsettling sense of anxiety.

But this was different. This was one-on-one.

“I’m concerned about you, Logan,” Charles said as he took a seat. “And I’m afraid I’m not the only one. The children seem to be quite worried about your outburst in the Danger Room on Saturday.”

“The kids just like to gossip,” he dismissed. “If there was a rumour that Remy LeBeau was joining the X-Men, they’d gossip about that too.”

“But this isn’t just a rumour, is it, Logan?” he replied. He didn’t even crack a smile at the thought of Gambit being one of the teachers at the Institute. It deserved a chuckle, at least. 

Charles leaned forward, placing his clasped hands on his desk. “Would you mind telling me exactly what happened?”

“Yes,” he responded.

Charles stared. He expected his silence to persuade Logan into talking.

“That might work on the kids, Chuck, but I’m a grown-up. And I don’t want to talk about it,” he maintained. There was a blunt edge to his voice that might or might not have been there if he was less tired.

He seemed exasperated by this, and sat back in his chair. “Logan, I am merely concerned for your safety. If there’s something the matter—“

“It’s nothing,” he interrupted. “It was just my brain trying to make sense of an old memory. You said it might be a side effect of what we’re doing.”

He looked pensive. Like a zoologist who had been studying an animal for the past six years and had just been made to consider a new hypothesis. “I suspected you might begin having more memory-based dreams, but to have something in a violent manner such as this…”

“I’m a veteran,” Logan said flatly. “Comes with the trauma, on a little side dish. Are we done here, Chuck?”

Charles blinked at him, seeming surprised by his hostility.

_Shouldn’t be surprised. Isn’t that what you chose me for, Charlie? Guard dog to protect your toy soldiers?_

“Logan,” he said slowly. “Whatever I’ve done to upset you, know that I am sincerely sorry. But I’ll ask you to think of the children before you—“

“Don’t worry yourself, Teach,” he cut him off, rising from his chair. “I’m not going anywhere. You don’t have to rearrange the timetable.” He turned to the door.

“You’ve been having nightmares again, haven’t you?” he interjected.

Logan stopped, his back to Charles. He wanted to walk right out of the office, but he stayed rooted to the spot. “I’m always having nightmares,” he said.

“But they’ve been worse recently,” he guessed.

He couldn’t stop the memories of his nightmares leaking into his consciousness. It was rapidfire, glimpses that he only recognised because he’d seen them again and again and again. Charles wouldn’t be able to glean any actual information from them, just that his estimations had been right.

“I’ve got a handle on it, Charles,” he said. Charles didn’t respond. Logan took it to mean that the conversation was over, and he walked from the office.

It felt like exhaustion was fraying him at the edges. He kept trying to push through it, telling himself that he shouldn’t be this tired, as if that thought alone would keep him awake. He changed his mind about not making anything new to take out to the woods – he turned on the coffee machine.

“You could just take a nap,” Hank suggested, sipping his own tea at the table. He didn’t look up from the newspaper that he was flipping through. “There are a couple of hours before dinner is served.”

“I’m not a preschooler,” Logan said.

He sighed. “Have I ever told you that that stubborn attitude of yours is going to get you killed?”

“Once or twice,” he replied.

Hank huffed in a way that said ‘ _Understatement._ ’ The coffee machine whirred, and Logan hunted for a Thermos in one of the cupboards.

When Logan got to the edge of the woods, he had already cycled back through the possibilities for what he would find a hundred times. He was midway through this cycle when he saw the campfire.

When he saw her sitting in front of it.

“Laura,” he said, out of the sheer shock of it. He’d _expected_ her to stay missing. He’d _expected_ to spend another night alone.

She was hugging her knees, looking into the pit of the campfire. She must have heard him coming already, because she didn’t react to his approach at all.

“Are… you alright, kid?” he asked. He sat down 45 degrees from where she was. She nodded. Relief was flooding his system as he pulled the Tupperware box out of his bag.

He didn’t know what he could say; she obviously didn’t want to talk about it, and she looked fine, so maybe it was no big deal. Maybe he’d been worrying over nothing this whole time. He placed the box in between them.

“I am sorry,” she said, timid. She was looking away from him, into the trees.

“For what?” he asked.

Her hands tightened ground her legs. She swallowed, lifted her head, met his eyes, and said clearly, “I am sorry that I missed rendezvous.”

He felt a punch to the gut. _Rendezvous_. That word belonged in a mission briefing. Not an apology from a little girl. The way she answered him – enunciating her words like that. That was the voice of someone who had been drilled to answer questions in full sentences. A soldier repeating back orders.

She had retreated back into herself, expecting punishment, expecting pain. He checked his anger; she wouldn’t understand its direction. She’d think it was for her.

“I’m not mad at you, kid.”

She didn’t believe him. “But…” she said, and every syllable was trembling, “I ran away.”

He looked into the white ashes in the centre of the campfire. He’d managed to coax it to life late the previous night, but he hadn’t thought to bring a real jacket, and it had been freezing.

“Kid,” he started, trying to collect all his words in the right order. “You don’t have to stay here with me. I’m not going to make you do anything. But I’m asking you… I’m asking you to let me help you.”

Her uncertain eyes went from him, to the Tupperware box between them. Then she turned and rifled through the duffel bag beside her until she dug out the empty plastic box and handed it to him.

“Thanks.” He gestured at the new box, “I brought something new.” He pointed at a sandwich when she opened it. “This one. It’s peanut butter.”

She took a bite and chewed, frowning. She didn’t seem to know what to make of it.

“You don’t have to finish it, if you don’t like it,” he said. She swallowed the bite she had and then put it down. She reached instead for a familiar old salted chip sandwich, and neither of them talked for a while.

He was midway through a sip of coffee when he noticed her staring at him. No, not him – his Thermos.

“It’s coffee. You probably wouldn’t like it,” he said. She kept staring. He offered her the flask.

She took a sip and immediately made a face akin to the one Kitty had made on a similar occasion. She handed it back to him as if just holding the flask was putting a bitter taste in her mouth.

“Why do you drink it?” she asked, wiping her lips, but not the disgust in her eyes.

He took another sip. “It keeps me awake.”

“Oh,” she said, and her eyes went down.

“Hey—Don’t worry about it. Really. You didn’t do any harm.” _No harm I haven’t already done to myself tenfold._ “Pretty sure Kitty thought I had a hangover this morning, but, hey…”

Her shoulders were hunching, and she was holding on to her arms. He could almost feel the pressure building in her, and then the words burst outwards: “Why do you want to help me?”

_Because this is my fault. Because you deserve to be happy. Because I want to see you smile again. Because X-Men are supposed to help people._

“Because… I can,” he answered. He wasn’t sure what the honest truth was until it had already left his lips.

That was enough. It was enough that he _could_.

Tears were shimmering in her eyes, and she was shaking like a leaf. He wanted to hug her, to hold her tight and tell her he loved her, but it was too soon. She would flinch away from him – she would feel trapped. He held out a hand, palm-up, for her to meet halfway.

She took his arm and pulled herself in, falling into his chest and clutching her arms around his waist. Logan’s hands automatically went up, out of the way like a surrender. The kid was full of surprises.

Carefully, after he started to breathe again, he brought his hand down and cupped it around the back of her head while she shuddered against him.

“It’s okay, Laura,” he said. “I won’t leave you.”

\---

He pulled the string out an inch further to the left. “How’s that look?” he asked.

Kitty hummed. “I don’t know. I can’t tell anymore! It looks wonky. But it looks worse when you try and make it straighter!”

Logan sighed. “Kid, he’s not gonna notice if the banner is half a centimetre out of place.”

“I just want it to be perfect,” she gnawed on her fingernails, flicking glances around the rest of the parlour. There were birthday banners, bunting, balloons, a finger-food buffet, and a speaker system that Bobby had helped her ‘borrow’ from the TV room.

“It looks great. He’s gonna love it. Relax, pun’kin. And quit that nibbling, or you’ll ruin that nail varnish you spent an unreasonable amount of time applying.” He climbed down from the chair he had been standing on.

She threw her arms up, as if relaxing was so completely and obviously out of the question. “You just don’t get it, Logan.” She did not attempt to explain further.

“Yeah, yeah. End of the world, yada yada. It’s a birthday party. Try to have some actual fun.” He pushed the chair back into its place. Lockheed was perched on the dresser by the door. He scratched his head, “The lizard agrees with me. Right, bub?”

Lockheed squawked and stretched his wings. Could mean anything. Logan was pretty sure this little alien dragon thing could speak English anytime he wanted. He made an elective choice to be loud and ambiguous at all times. Choosing to take Lockheed’s screech as an affirmation, he made for the door. “See ya later, kiddo.”

“Wait—“ she said, and the worry was still riddled in her voice.

He turned with a sigh, and said, “If it’s that squint, fix it yourself.”

“No, I meant… are you not staying?” she asked. She really did look nervous. Exactly how worked up over this _was_ she?

“I told you, I got a prior engagement,” he said. “Besides, you don’t want a million-year-old man at your party. Say happy birthday to the Big Guy for me.”

His prior engagement got into the Range Rover without a word, hugging her duffel bag. She looked nervous about being on the road – or being away from the forest, or in the car with him, he couldn’t tell.

He could remember his first week at the Institute. He’d spent most of it shut in his new room, not talking to anyone as far as he could get away with. He remembered a knock on his door – the first time anyone besides the Professor had voluntarily come to see him.

“S’open.”

Ororo opened the door, and her eyes fell on him where he was cross-legged on the floor, with his back against the wardrobe. “Wolverine? May I speak with you?”

“Mm,” he replied, which meant ‘Yes’ although she didn’t seem sure.

“My apologies, were you… meditating?”

He started to get up off the floor. “I’m full of surprises.”

“I’m sure.” She was watching him with real interest – not in a rude way, she was just trying to understand. People were often surprised to learn that he meditated, especially if they had only ever seen him on the clock. The berserker inside didn’t exactly embody tranquillity.

“Why are you still wearing your uniform? Do you not feel safe here at the school?” she asked.

He thought about the mindreader recruiting people into a private army. The Irishman who could shatter a window with a scream. The soldier with the laser eyes. The beefcake with literal abs of steel. The fuzzy gargoyle who disappeared in sulphurous clouds. The woman who commanded the weather standing in front of him.

“No,” he answered. Straightforward as that. This place was new, and surprising, and hard to predict. It was only natural that he stay on his guard.

“You have worked with other mutants in the past, have you not?”

“Your powers ain’t the issue,” he said. He didn’t feel like elaborating.

She was looking around the bedroom. Searching for something. Some kind of answer, or clue, something about who he was. She didn’t find it. “Your room looks so barren,” she commented.

“Ain’t got nothing to clutter it up with,” he shrugged. “You come a-knockin’ for a reason, Lightning Rod, or was it just to insult my wardrobe and décor choices?”

She seemed to come back to herself. “I would like to invite you to dine with the rest of the X-Men. I understand that you might be used to looking after only yourself, Wolverine, but you are part of a team now. Part of a family.”

He could have made some witty joke about the poker nights in Department H, or how being on a mission with Alpha Flight felt like babysitting half the time – but the words wouldn’t come. Storm turned, deciding that she had said her piece. “I hope to see you down there,” she added, and then left Logan’s line of sight.

He’d looked at the duffel bag on the floor, and the clothes spilling out of it. It was the only sign that the room was lived in at all.

He didn’t have as many memories as he should, but he could learn from what he had. He could try to make the transition for Laura easier. That was what he was doing now, as she sat in the passenger seat and played with the window switch.

He pulled up on the side of the road when they got into town. He got out of the car, and Laura followed his lead tentatively. The house in front of them was semi-detached, with two upstairs flats and two downstairs flats.

“Who lives here?” Laura asked as he picked up the canvas bag from the back of the Range Rover and shut the door.

“We do,” he answered, fishing the keys out of his pocket and approaching the door to 47a. He eased the door open and gestured for her to come inside.

After climbing the stairs, they were greeted with another door, and behind that, a kitchen followed by a living room. Logan had seen the flat already, so instead he watched Laura react to it. There was no wonder, or glee, or disappointment on her face, but she was eyeing it up with a hunger about her.

She ran a hand over the small square dining table in the middle of the kitchen, and walked over to the back of the sofa, staring at the blank screen of the TV for a moment. Then she looked right and saw the short corridor with the bathroom and the bedroom on either side.

He caught up to her as she opened the bedroom door, where there was a double bed and a dresser, and not much else. It was a modest apartment, and right now it looked as barren and impersonal as they came. He hoped she could fill it out the way that his room in the Institute had eventually filled out. “This is your room,” he said.

She looked up to him a little sceptically, having already verified that the bathroom was a bathroom. “Where is your room?”

“The sofa pulls out into a bed. When I’m here, that’s where I’ll sleep. I don’t need my own room.” He walked back into the kitchen. She kept him in her sight, but she was staying close to the wall. That was fine – this place was new, and she didn’t feel safe here yet. Hell, he didn’t feel particularly safe here yet, either.

“You want to make a sandwich?” he offered. He was already getting ingredients out of the cupboards – if he was regretting skipping out of Piotr’s birthday party at all, it was for the free party food. She came closer, her fingers curling around the edge of the counter, and watched him.

When he was done, he offered her the handle of the butter knife and she took it. She buttered her bread, but then seemed hesitant to choose a filling. He suggested that she try combining things, or having half of two things, and her eyes widened with possibility. He watched her stack the bread high with ham, cheese, chips, and, oddly, peanut butter, before sandwiching it together.

When they finished their sandwiches (Logan’s plain cheese seemed a little meagre compared to hers) he washed his plate and put it away, and she copied quietly. He turned the TV on and started flicking through the channels. He didn’t give anything time to grab his attention – he was too tired to care. He was still short on sleep, and constantly worrying about getting the down payment on this place paid, and how Laura was going to live here and how much time he was going to spend here, as well as juggling all of his responsibilities at the school, had drained him more than he cared to admit.

He handed the remote to Laura, who was sitting on the other sofa cushion with a straight back. “Find something that looks interesting,” he mumbled. He shouldn’t sleep right now, he wasn’t going to. He would just rest his eyes for a moment, let Laura find a programme…

When he woke up, there was still a dusky light only just breaking into the apartment. The rest of the light came from the TV, which was on the nature channel. Laura was resting the heel of her hand on her face, watching, and she startled when he asked, “How long was I asleep?”

She looked panicked at her lack of an answer, unable to give him a precise number. He twisted to look at the clock on the kitchen wall, and it told him: 7:34. His joints popped and cracked as he stood up – he needed to stretch, properly. He’d figured out a long time ago that the adamantium on his skeleton didn’t do well when left idle for too long. Between his skipping out on Danger Room training and the lack of X-Men missions lately, he was all seized up. He needed to exercise.

He needed to feed the kid first. He switched on the oven and plucked the pizza he’d bought out of the fridge before he realised that Laura was staring at him. Backlit by the windows and the TV, she reminded him of a lemur, wide-eyed and ready to flee.

He switched the kitchen light on, but paused before flicking on the overhead for the living room area next to it. “You want the light on?” he asked. She had turned back to the screen, but she shrugged, so he turned it on.

Once the pizza was out of the oven, he cut it into slices and took it over to the sofa. “It’s hot,” he warned. It wouldn’t do for her first slice of pizza to burn her tongue. The nature documentary on the TV sucked him in, and before he knew it the pizza was done and there was no more light pushing through the windows except a slight orange glow from streetlamps that were a little too far away.

“We need to make your bed up,” he realised, kicking himself. He tipped out the canvas bag that had been abandoned in the kitchen into her room, and the sheets and bedding cascaded to the floor. He directed Laura to start putting cases on the pillows while he wrestled with the duvet, and the sheet became a collaborative effort, pulling the corners at the same time so that they didn’t spring up.

He got her new pyjamas out of the dresser and handed them to her. “Here, they’re… sleeping clothes. Go into the bathroom and change into them, and brush your…”

He should have run through a normal bedtime routine before this point. “Toothbrush. Goddamn it. I forgot to buy you a toothbrush. Okay. Fine. It’s fine. You can skip one day, we’ll – we’ll get it tomorrow.” He ran an exhausted hand down his face. They’d deal with everything tomorrow.

“Do you not need to make up your bed?” she asked, her pyjamas in her arms.

He looked in the vague direction that he would be able to see the sofabed in, if he’d been able to see through walls. “Probably,” he sighed.

He walked back out to the sofa and started setting it up, swinging out the frame with the mattress. It creaked under his weight as he sat down. Didn’t have bedding. He hadn’t thought to bring more than one spare set from the Institute. Didn’t matter. He was pretty sure he could fall asleep on the spot. He should at least make sure the kid got settled in first…

He heard little bare feet on the carpet, and when he looked up, he saw her holding a pillow. The pyjamas were a bit too big for her, trailing over her ankles and her thumbs. She held the pillow towards him.

“No, kid, that’s yours,” he said.

“You need it,” she said, blinking at the floor determinedly.

He sighed and took it from her. “Thanks, kiddo. Let’s get you settled, eh?” He left the pillow on the bed and guided her to her room with his hand gently on her back.

She climbed into the double bed, and it was giant compared to her. She settled into the middle where her remaining pillow was, pulling the duvet around her. He had a hand on the doorframe, and used the other one to switch off the light.

“If you need anything, just shout for me,” he said. “Try… try not to get too close when I’m sleeping, okay?”

She nodded, not seeming to need further explanation.

“How do you want the door?” he asked. Wide open made her clearly visible from the hallway, and sent light pouring into the room. Closed shut trapped her in the dark. He shut it partway, so that he couldn’t see her any more, but there was still light coming into the room. “Like this?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“Okay. Goodnight, Laura,” he said.

He didn’t really expect her to respond, but she echoed, “Goodnight, Logan.”

He needed to go for a run. To stretch himself out, mostly, but the cool night air on his skin might relax some of his nerves, too. He’d wait until Laura was asleep – she’d hear him leaving otherwise, and then she might panic. He had to be careful. He had to be considerate.

He could remember, before Department H, when he’d been alone and wild, lashing out at anything that came close and unable to reach any kind of identity in his scrambled mind except a single name. He’d been too wired to fall asleep in the Hudsons’ house. Even despite their kindness, he was sure that he would wake to find himself hooked up to machines, aimed at with guns, studied by men in white coats.

This was the same. She was going through the same thing, except she could put names to the faces of the people in her nightmares.

He only meant to lie back on the sofa bed for a few minutes.


	5. Chapter 5

It was strange to wake up in the dark. The lights never went out at the Facility, and she’d got used to waking up to sunlight recently. But when Laura came hurtling out of a dream, the bedroom – her bedroom – was shrouded in shadow.

It wasn’t nearly as dark as it had been during the night – the first inklings of daylight were scratching at the curtains, and the door was still open wide enough for her to slip through without touching it, just about. But still, it was enough to remind her that things were changing.

For a while, she just sat in that moment, in the middle of the island that was her mattress. North Salem wasn’t awake yet, she could tell by the quiet outside the window, but she was. Being awake before everyone else was a time of uncertainty, and anticipation, and opportunity. She had learned this when she had spent time waiting and watching and killing people.

She sidestepped through the gap between the door and its frame, and looked towards the sofabed. She could only see the back corner of the sofa from this angle, and anyone that might have been on it was obscured. She could see the foot of the mattress, empty, but she couldn’t be sure that no one was there until she took a few steps forward to peer over the cushions.

He’d left. That was fine. He’d said she would be by herself a lot. Still, though, her heart had sunk at the realisation that she was alone.

There was a shuddering breath behind her, like something dying, and she jumped. It took her a moment to process what it was when she turned, just seeing a _thing_ hunched over the kitchen sink—

But then she saw him. Logan had one hand braced on the counter, and the other on the base of the tap, and his head was drooped below his hunched shoulders. He sounded like he was struggling to breathe – or recovering from struggling to breathe. He guided his right hand from the tap to his face, and it was shaking.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“Oh—Jesus, kid-!” he spun, tense, and then relaxed backwards onto the counter before he finished the last syllable. He sunk into the corner until he was sitting on the floor with his hands clasped, resting on his knees.

“I am - sorry,” Laura stammered, “sorry, I am sorry—“

“S’okay,” he cut in, and exhaled with his eyes closed. “You just surprised me, is all.”

It couldn’t possibly be okay. She’d hurt him. He was hurting, she could see it. Crumpled on the floor, trying not to heave his breaths in. As soon as he got his bearings, she was going to be in trouble, she knew it. He didn’t want to scare her away before he could catch her.

She listened to his breaths settle. He was smoothing himself out, flattening his nerves, and the calmer he got, the more her own nerves spiked. She couldn’t move. She was frozen in place, trying to prepare for whatever was coming.

Logan looked her in the eyes, and he didn’t move. “I’m not gonna hurt you, kid,” he said.

She didn’t know whether to believe him. Just to be safe, when she joined him on the floor she sat down a few feet away from him. She was smaller and quicker. If she needed to, she could get away. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

He made a ‘Hmf’ sound and ran his hand backwards over his hair. “Too many things to list, kid.”

This was an exaggeration. She was starting to understand that people just did that sometimes. It made things needlessly confusing.

He must have sensed that she wasn’t satisfied by the answer, because he elaborated, “A lot of people have hurt me in a lot of different ways. I don’t remember why, a lot of the time, but… pain is easy to remember.”

Pain was easy to remember. “It hurts,” she said. “To remember.” She was looking at the table leg, but she was seeing Kimura.

“Yeah.”

She turned back to him. A moment ago, he had seemed lost in his own pain, but now he was looking at her with clear eyes. “Does it ever stop hurting?” she asked.

He was fiddling with a chain around his neck. He looked lost again, for a second, staring through her. “I dunno,” he replied.

He reached an arm up to the counter and pulled himself to his feet. She rose to hers and backed up a few steps, but he didn’t come any closer to her. “I’m going to make bacon and pancakes for breakfast,” he announced.

He began to hum a tune as he flipped through the cupboards and opened the fridge. Laura sat down at the table and watched with fascination. The longer she watched, the less tension clung to his shoulders. By the time he was pouring batter into the frying pan, he looked like he belonged to a different time, a different place, than the one he had just occupied.

He sent a sidelong grin Laura’s way as he held out the pan. “Ready?” he asked. Before she could ask for what, he flipped the pancake into the air and caught it back in the pan. He looked pleased with himself, and pleased with the surprise on her face.

She wanted to learn how to shed her pain as if it were a coat.

She got up from the table and joined him by the stove. She watched him finish the pancake and pour more batter in, and do the same as he had with the last. When he started to prepare to flip the third pancake, she said, “Can I try?”

He looked a little surprised, but he smiled and stepped back. When she took the handle, he instructed, “You wanna push down and forward, and then sharply up.” He made the motion with his hand.

She stared at the pancake, braced her knees, and flipped. It went clean up in the air, reaching almost her chin level, and slapped neatly back in the pan.

Logan grinned widely. “Good job, kid. Back on the stove with it.” The next two pancakes, he helped her size up the amount of batter she needed and when to flip them, but the final one she did on her own, while he used another pan to fry bacon beside her.

Two stacks of pancakes and bacon were placed on the table. He drizzled maple syrup on his, and intervened before Laura could finish covering the entire surface of her pancakes. “Easy there, Sweet Tooth,” he said.

She reluctantly put the spoon back in the dish and picked up the knife and fork Logan had set in front of her. She cut a slice of the pancakes and a piece of the bacon, lathered generously in maple syrup, and shovelled it into her mouth.

It felt like her heart was covered in warm, sickly maple syrup. No wonder Logan was mended at the mere thought of pancakes and bacon, if it felt this good. Once she had cleared her plate, she mopped up the excess maple syrup with her finger and sucked on it.

Logan made a funny sort of huffing sound, with a smile on his face. The sun was hitting his eyes from the window. They were blue and sugar-brown, with a sort of gentleness that she hadn’t seen in since Dr. Kinney had stopped reading her stories. He was not the killing machine she had seen on the tapes.

“Go wash your face and hands, kiddo,” he said. “I’ll clean the plates.”

She had to go onto the tips of her toes to see herself in the mirror above the sink. There was shiny syrup around her mouth, and she turned on the water to run her hands under and splash her face. She wiped the water away with the sleeve of her sleeping clothes.

Logan was still washing the dishes when she came out of the bathroom. Hearing her leave, he turned from the sink and said, “Put on some clothes you can wear outside. We’re going into town today.”

She chose the cargo pants and the plain blue t-shirt. Logan was still wearing the same clothes from the day before. Once they had passed the Range Rover parked outside the house, Laura asked what they were doing.

“Shopping,” he answered. It took ten minutes to get to Commercial Street. Laura hadn’t ventured onto this part of North Salem when she was here before, although she had seen the sign pointing to it from the square.

The town was waking up now, and there were a few other people on the street with them. There was a man stretching his face into a yawn and trying to drink his coffee at the same time. A woman fussing over a stack of papers she was clutching, walking briskly with pointed glances up to secure her route. There was a mother and small boy clasping hands as he hopped between tiles on the sidewalk.

Her eyes were torn away from the bystanders as Logan stopped outside a small store with peeling orange paint on the outside wall. The bell on the charity shop door rang as they entered. “Okay. If you see something you like, point it out,” he said.

There were a lot of colours in the store. Clothes were crammed onto circular racks, and items that wouldn’t fit there were hanging around the store from thumbtacks. Blouses with garish patterns, and shirts that would look like dresses on her. There were lots of places to hide. It made her slightly uneasy.

Further in, there were a collection of racks with clothes more her size. They were even more brightly coloured than the rest. “This will fit,” she said, pulling a green t-shirt with a lizard on it out of the rack. She handed it to Logan.

“But do you like it?” he asked.

That was a strange question. It would serve its function. Was there more to it than that? She considered the colours. The green was pleasant, she supposed. Like the forest. “Yes,” she decided.

“Okay then.” He draped it over his arm. He began to look through the racks, too. After a minute of Laura flipping through coathangers of too-small hoodies, he held up a long-sleeved shirt printed with an array of coloured sea creatures. “How about this?” She thought for a moment, nodded, and he added it to his arm.

The cashier, approached them with her hands clasped. “Can I help you boys with anything?” she asked. She smelled of dust and hair dye.

“My daughter and I are just browsing,” Logan said, gruff. “Thanks.”

She looked down at Laura with an amount of surprise that seemed unnecessary. “Oh, I’m very sorry, young lady,” she apologised. She was bending her knees and leaning in.

Laura looked at Logan for what to do. He gestured with his head to follow to another part of the store, and she was happy to oblige. She realised when she joined him that she was still holding a zip-through hoodie. It was blue, and had a faded print of a rainbow and the words “Always be Kind” on it.

She looked at Logan, who was flicking through a rack of pants and muttering the sizes to himself. _Always be kind_. What an interesting sentiment. She added the hoodie to the pile on his arm. He extracted a pair of denim jeans from the rack and held them up to her waist. The legs brushed the floor.

“You should try these ones on,” he said. She took the hanger, and started to pull on the waistband of her cargo pants, but he interrupted, “No no no no. In. The changing room. Try them on in the changing room.”

There was a small curtained-off stall at the back of the store. “I’ll be standing right here if you need me,” Logan told her.

The jeans were inflexible and difficult to get on, but she didn’t need him. When she emerged from the stall, he looked her up and down, and then asked if she wanted them.

He was supposed to tell her the right answer. What she _needed_. But he kept giving her choices. It was too much. Her eyes went back and forth on the ground, trying to process, trying to decide. They were restrictive, and a little bit too long. But she liked the way they looked, she thought. And they insulated her legs well.

“Hey,” he said, kneeling down so that he could meet her eyes. He spoke gently, and quietly. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal, kid.”

She realised that there were tears rolling down her cheeks, and she wiped at them. “I don’t know how to choose,” she said.

He nodded. “I know. It’s okay. I’m sorry for putting too much on you. How about this: I like the jeans. I think you should get them. You can still say you don’t want to.”

She thought about it. “I want to get them.”

He smiled. “Okay. Let’s keep looking.”

At the back of the store, there were shelves of books, tapes, and discs, and a box of assorted toys. Logan poked through the box, but didn’t seem to find anything worthwhile. The backs of the disc boxes mostly looked the same, black with obtuse lettering and meaningless titles. When Logan asked, “Anything catching your eye, kid?” she shook her head.

There was a crate of books on the floor that were too tall or long to go on the shelf. Most of them had stylised characters on the front, usually anthropomorphic animals, and font that was easy to read. She flicked through them with little interest, until she got to a tall, thick-paged book with gold lettering on the front, reading: The Book of Fables.

Carefully, like it was going to crumble in her hands, she took it out of the crate. She opened the first page, and it fell open easily, the spine long-broken. She read the contents page, and saw familiar names.

1\. Hansel and Gretel  
2\. Little Red Riding Hood  
3\. Jack and the Beanstalk  
4\. Sleeping Beauty  
5\. Puss in Boots  
6\. Rapunzel  
7\. Pinocchio

There were more entries past _Pinocchio_ , but her eyes travelled no further. The puppet boy. A part of her itched to turn to page 56, to see the illustrations and the words, but another part of her held her in place, staring at the contents page until her eyes hurt from not blinking.

“You want to get that, Laura?” Logan asked.

She blinked. “No,” she said, and slipped it back into the crate. She joined him at the checkout. As the cashier told him the total for their items, she swept her eyes around the store.

Logan placed a hand on top of her head. “You looking out for me, Sweet Tooth?” he asked.

He took his hand away as they made for the exit, and she found herself missing it. “Yes,” she answered.

“Appreciate it,” he said. She stared at his hand loose by his side, glared at it really, until she gave into the impulse and took hold of it.

Like the pancakes in the morning, he seemed surprised, but happy. He squeezed her hand lightly, and she squeezed back. _Always be kind_. She was starting to get it.

\---

The best kind of exercise was the kind that let you do recon. Logan had been jogging around the neighbourhood for two hours, mentally mapping the area as he went. He had passed one of his neighbours in 46b walking her bull terrier, and she had given him a tentative smile. The street was otherwise quiet, most people sitting or sleeping in to enjoy their Sunday morning in peace. Or at church, maybe. Did people go to church in this town?

“Don’t you have a faith, Logan?” Kurt had asked him once. He rose from his knees, and his tail swished from side to side. “Something that you can always hold on to, no matter how dire the situation?”

“I got faith,” he’d shrugged. “I believe in what’s real. What I can see, what I can feel – that’s what matters. Anything else’s jus’ imagination.”

“And you have no use for that?” he inquired.

“Nope.”

He looked solemn. “I am sorry, my friend,” he said sincerely. “I never realised how inescapably alone you must be. With nothing to hold onto but yourself – how do you stand it?”

“I ain’t alone, bub.” Logan flicked Kurt’s ear. “I got you. You’re real, ain’t’ya? Just ‘cause I don’t got nobody watching over my shoulder, don’t mean nobody’s got my back.”

When he got back to the house, Laura was still asleep. She was a little more comfortable in the house than she had been the previous night, and this had to be the first time she’d ever slept on a mattress.

After he fried the last of the bacon on the stove, he sat down at the kitchen table with a plate and started to flick through the newspaper that he’d picked up. Someone had left it on a bench, and apparently he was becoming a hoarder. Something in the back of his head had told him ‘for packing’ and ‘for the kid to make shit with’ before it even occurred to him to read it.

People waging wars on other people being out-headlined by sports leagues. Boring thinkpieces by boring people. The latest rehash of the mutant rights debate occupied half of page 7.

He recognised the panicked breaths of a nightmare immediately, and folded the paper. He eased Laura’s door open slowly and saw her straining against invisible bonds, her eyes squeezed shut. She sat up suddenly with a gasp, and shrunk away from the light spilling through the door.

“Just me, kiddo. You’re safe,” he said, and reached for the light switch. She flinched at the sudden change and blinked, but her little chest was heaving less, her hands loosening on the duvet.

He opened the door wider and stood to the side. “Let’s get you some breakfast,” he said. He took out Frosted Flakes from the cupboard and milk from the fridge. He poured her a bowl, and she went to sit down at the table.

“Let’s sit on the sofa,” he said. “There’s still time to catch the Sunday morning cartoons.”

She didn’t have a comment, but went to sit on the sofa nevertheless. He’d tucked away the bed before he went for his run. He flicked around for the kids’ network, and brightly coloured characters took over the screen.

Laura watched intently as she ate her cereal, eyes darting back and forth as if she was memorising a briefing. “I don’t understand,” she said finally.

“Cartoons are jus’ supposed to be entertaining. They’re not realistic. Most often they don’t mean anything.”

She ate her cereal. She still seemed to be puzzling out the concept. “Like a fairytale,” she said.

There was no change in her face. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “Sure, kinda like a fairytale. You read many of those?”

“Dr. Kinney used to read them to me,” she answered, and then chomped down on her spoon. She was still staring at the TV screen, but he had a feeling that she wasn’t really watching.

“Was Dr. Kinney one of the people who hurt you?” he asked carefully.

She slowed her chewing. This question seemed to have a complicated answer. That pointed to an emotional hurt, a kind of hurt that she wasn’t sure counted. The pain felt from a beating was easier to cling to than the sting of neglect or harsh words. “She asked me to hurt other people,” she told him instead. “But not the right other people. So Dr. Rice made me kill her.”

The TV made cartoon noises. _BAM! CRASH!_ Little birdies fluttering in a circle. “I’m sorry.”

She looked at him, confused. “You did not do this.”

 _But I’m the reason you were in that position in the first place._ He squashed the thought with a grimace. If he was going to convince the kid that what they made her do wasn’t her fault, he couldn’t blame himself for her existence in the same breath. Lead with example, not with orders. “Someone oughta apologise, and I’m the only one around,” he said. “M’sorry I couldn’t’ve helped you sooner.”

She turned back to the TV, and she had that look in her eyes again, tiny back and forth movements as she processed. She had a point about the cartoons, Logan thought. For a kids’ show, it was weirdly hard to follow. Or maybe he was just a hundred-or-so years too old to get it.

In the afternoon, he took out the A4 notepad and coloured pencils he had bought the day before and placed them on the kitchen table. “Have you ever done art before?” he asked.

Laura shook her head.

“Okay. Well, the great thing about art, is that it’s like cartoons. It doesn’t have to be realistic. You can draw whatever you want.” He tore a page from the notebook and started to draw, simplistic and from memory, the Blackbird, and behind it, just to use all the colours, a rainbow. “If you make a mistake, you can erase it,” he demonstrated. “You want to try?”

She took a pencil, but didn’t put it to the page in front of her. She stared at the blank white as if willing it to create the picture for her. His watching probably wasn’t helping, he decided. He got up from the table and sat at the TV instead.

A while later, he couldn’t have said how long, she approached him and handed him the piece of paper. She had coloured in a mustard yellow block with a slightly spiked black blob just behind it, and a rainbow-filled box behind that.

He smiled at it. It was a picture of him watching TV, as seen from the kitchen. “I love it,” he said. “Well done, Sweet Tooth.”

He drove back to the Institute that evening, intending to slip upstairs and sleep in a bed with actual sheets. He’d pick up another spare set to take back to the house in the morning.

“Logan!” Kurt said appearing with a _BAMF_ hanging from the chandelier in the foyer by his feet.

“Jesus, Elf, get down from there,” he grumbled.

There was another puff of smoke and he was leaning on the banister at the foot of the stairs. “We were just about to start a betting pool.”

“Can’t get rid of me that easily, Fuzzball.” He started up the stairs, but there was yet another cloud of sulphur in his face, and Kurt’s three digits on his chest. “That was two steps. You could have walked that,” Logan said.

He cracked a grin. “Yeah, yeah, my limbs’ll atrophy, I’ve heard it all before. Play Madden with me?”

Apparently Logan’s expression managed to convey _Seriously?_ because he answered, “Yes, seriously! Come on. We haven’t played in forever.”

“Ask one of the kids, Kurt. I’m going to bed.” He pushed past and climbed the stairs.

“Terry’s coming dangerously close to claiming your title of reigning champion, you know. You don’t want the kids to think you’re getting soft, do you?” he called. He’d set the bait.

Logan sighed. “Fine. One game.”

The sofa in the games room was pretty well-worn. It had sagging creases in the seats, and there were a few distinctive stains where people had knocked over their drinks and snacks because of a jumpscare or a particularly intense boss battle. Charles had long given up having it dry-cleaned.

The game was punctuated with progressively transparent ‘Man, I’m getting pummelled’s and ‘Go a little easier, will you?’s, until Nightcrawler went down in not so much a blaze of glory, but a slightly pathetic beach bonfire of defeat.

“I guess now I remember why we don’t do this that often,” Kurt laughed.

“Alright, what’s the deal,” Logan asked flatly, staring him down. “You don’t suck at this game that much.”

“Tell me about it. What an embarrassing lose,” he shook his head.

He didn’t budge. Kurt attempted to keep it up for a second longer, and then slumped against his shoulder. “Ugh. I should have known this wouldn’t work.”

“Yeah. Probably. What were you trying to do?” There was a harsh edge to his voice, maybe harsher than was reasonable.

“I don’t know!” He nuzzled his cheek into Logan’s shoulder. “Cheer you up?” he mumbled.

He sighed. “Kurt…”

“I know it doesn’t work like that,” he said. “I know you deal with episodes by taking time alone. Emotional and physical distance. But it’s been a whole week. And I just thought, you know, if you didn’t want to talk about it, you could at least crush me at a dumb video game.”

Logan put his hand over Kurt’s and looked into the TV screen. The blue fuzz covering his skin was a familiar sensation by now, a comforting one. So many new things had been happening, he’d let himself forget the old stuff. “This… this isn’t just about what happened in the Danger Room.”

Kurt shifted his face so that he could look at Logan’s. He was expectant, waiting for an explanation.

“I’m sorry. I _can’t_ tell you about this. Not yet.” He wished he could loop Kurt in, he really did, but it was too risky. The more people in the house knew about Laura, the bigger the chance that Charles found out.

He was frowning, but he wasn’t going to argue. “Just don’t go in over your head, okay? The X-Men are always here to help you, Logan. You don’t have to do everything alone.”

 _Don’t go in over your head_. He almost laughed. He was so out of his depth here, he couldn’t see the surface. “Thanks, Elf.”

Kurt reached for the controller he’d abandoned on the arm of the sofa. “Come on, I want to beat you for real.”

“You’re not gonna win with your face in my shoulder like that,” he replied.

“Watch me,” he challenged.

He lost the game. “Rematch,” he demanded, but Logan had already played 200% of what he had promised.

“Some other time, Elf.” He made his way up the stairs and towards his room. He’d already known that finding a balance between the Xavier Institute and Laura was going to be difficult, but he was starting to think it would be harder than he thought.

Was it worth all the trouble to keep her a secret? Maybe he should cave. Tell Kurt, maybe Ororo when she got back. If Charles found out, then he found out, and he’d just have to deal with it. But there was some instinct, somewhere in his brain, rooted in a memory that he didn’t have, that he shouldn’t tell anyone.

Sometimes these instincts were good. They were _You’re being followed_ instincts or _This is a trap_ instincts, instincts that saved his life on missions. But sometimes they were other instincts, the kind that sent him reeling from needles, and the smell of concrete dust, and the sensation of water in his ears. It was impossible to differentiate them when he didn’t understand the source.

Did he not trust Charles because his instincts told him not to trust anyone, or did he not trust Charles because something subconscious recognised something untrustworthy in him?

He didn’t want to think about this anymore. He opened his bedroom door, ready for the day to be over, and then stopped. Kitty was sitting on his bed, legs crossed, with a very determined look on her face.

“I know your secret,” she said.


	6. Chapter 6

“I know your secret,” Kitty said. She had an excited glint in her eye.

He took a quick glance around the room to check that no one else was a part of this little operation. His nose confirmed what his eyes told him; no one else was in here. “Did you bring popcorn into my room?” he asked.

She looked a little put out by this unexpected reaction. “I know your secret,” she repeated.

“Yeah, I heard you the first time, Supersleuth. Did you bring popcorn up here while you waited for me to get back?” He couldn't see the bowl anywhere. If she had had time to get bored enough to make popcorn, eat it all, and then wash up, she had been waiting for him for a long time.

“Maybe. Look. That’s not the point. The point is—”

“Yeah. I got it. You know my secret.” He leaned on the back of the chair at his desk and crossed his arms. “Could you be a little more specific, darlin’? Cause, y’know, the last secret o’ mine you uncovered was my birthday, an’ we both remember how that turned out.”

“That was—an innocent mistake,” she flustered.

“I know.”

“No one died!” she reminded him. That was really the best that could be said of the situation. It had probably been his favourite birthday.

“I remember.” Was he enjoying this a little too much? “Are you gonna get to the point, Kitten, or are you just expectin’ me to spill all my secrets until I guess which one it is you’re talking about?”

“Why won’t you just say it?” she pressed.

The kid watched too many TV shows. She really thought this would work. “Say what?”

“You’ve been out of the house more than in, and you’ve been acting so weird, like emotional – which isn’t, you know, I mean, for you it’s, _you know_ – but you’ve been avoiding everyone too and you’ve been packing stuff, and—” She took a big breath, and that was when the smile started to fade from Logan’s face.

There were tears in her eyes. “Hey,” he said, “pun’kin…”

“Why won’t you just admit you’re moving back to Japan?!” she yelled.

“Uhhhhhh,” he said. He wasn’t sure what else he could say. She’d made her statement, and now she was unable to hold back the storm. Sobs started to accompany the tears rolling down her cheeks.

He sat down on the bed as she drew her knees up to her chin. “Kitten, I’m not moving back to Japan.”

“Then why have you been acting so weird?” she demanded, and she was brimming with a wet and righteous anger. “You’ve been grumpy and loner-y all week, more than usual, and I know it was going on before the Danger Room, and you still won’t come back to training sessions for some reason, and you were such a stick-in-the-mud for dodgeball and you didn’t come to Piotr’s party and where did you even go all weekend, and—"

“Kitten. Stop,” he interrupted. “I can’t tell you what’s going on. Okay? I can’t. Y’have to deal with it. There are some things I just can’t share w’you.”

“And you also can’t share with Kurt, or the Professor?” she asked, accusing.

It only took him a moment to figure out how she’d been eavesdropping. “That damn snake. One day, I am slicing that thing in half,” he threatened. Lockheed always made such a fuss, but he was very good at being stealthy when he wanted to.

“Have you told _anyone_ about this?” she asked.

“No. And no one’s gotta to know, either. That includes you.”

“But—”

“Nope. No puppy-dog eyes. I can’t tell you.”

“Please?” she begged.

“No.”

“Pleeeeaaase??”

He gave her a look. “Kitty. When has that ever worked.”

She groaned in frustration. She adopted a look of steely determination again, and said seriously, “Then I’ll just follow you and find out for myself.”

He wasn’t sure whether to be sceptical or impressed by her ambition. “Y’ think you can fool this nose? Not to mention you have class, and you live in a house with two telepaths. Didn’ Terry already demonstrate how hard it is to fake a sick day in this place?”

“Well, then I guess they’ll both just find out that I’m skipping class," she said. She had her eyes fixed on his; she knew exactly what she was doing. "And if they end up investigating why, I guess that’s just what it’ll be.”

Ah. Pinned. If he didn’t tell her, he’d go from having one deeply suspicious person on his tail to three. “Well played, kiddo,” he said.

She beamed at him, “Thanks.” She pointed a finger at him, switching back to serious, “Now tell me what I wanna know.” Somehow the sentiment was only emphasised by the teary streaks on her face.

“Alright, alright.” His brain was working like a machine, running through solutions. If Kitty was really going to have to know about Laura, then he was going to need damage control. “How’s this, Supersleuth—if you can get out of class tomorrow morning without making the Professor suspicious, then you can know about my project.”

“Deal,” she agreed eagerly.

What could possibly go wrong?

He picked her up from the layby on the edge of the woods at 9:30am. “Did I really have to walk all the way out here?” Kitty asked as she got into the passenger seat. “Why didn’t you just give me a ride to begin with?”

“Hey, if you wanna know about this, you gotta earn it, Half-Pint,” he said, instead of answering that he had to drop by the house first to explain the situation to Laura.

He’d told her that she didn’t have to do it if she didn’t want to. He wasn’t sure what his alternative was, but he’d have found some lame excuse. He was taking a yoga class in town or something. But Laura had agreed to meet Kitty, if not enthusiastically. They could trust her, he’d promised. She wasn’t a threat.

“So what did you tell the Professor?” he asked.

“I said I had a bad headache,” she replied, “and I was going for a walk to try and clear it up.”

He frowned. “And he bought it? Just like that.”

“Well,” she said, thinking, “I have got pretty good at blocking my thoughts to psychics since Ogūn. And I promised I would catch up.”

Right. Ogūn. Logan didn’t generally think of that little ordeal as anything that had any positive outcomes, but it had toughened Kitty up, for better or worse. He was glancing at her hair out of the corner of his eye while he watched the road; it was in an awkward mullet stage, still growing out from when Ogūn had cut it. Usually, she pinned it up, but apparently she’d been in too much of a hurry this morning.

When she’d come back to the X-Men with him, she’d played it off as a spur-of-the-moment decision she’d made on a spunky adventure. She was Shadowcat now, 100% badass, and she had a new haircut and a new ear piercing to prove it. But he saw the split seconds where the façade flickered, where she remembered what really happened to her hair and how she learned to twirl a sword as if it were an extension of her body.

“You’d… you’d talk to me, right?” Logan asked. He was gripping the steering wheel far too tightly.

“What?” Kitty said. She was just waiting to make a joke at his expense for that one - _I'd talk to you_ when _? On the subway? If we were the last two people on Earth?_

“If… it got too much. You’d talk to me about it.” His eyes shifted between her and the road. Her bemused smile fluttered and faded. He shouldn’t have brought it up.

There was a moment where neither of them spoke, and he couldn’t look at her. “Yeah, Wolvie, of course,” she replied, sober.

He nodded and kept staring at the road. “Good. Good.”

The radio in the Range Rover was still tuned in to the trashy pop station that Kitty liked, and they let it fill in the rest of the drive. Music changed so quickly. What was trendy one minute was abhorrently cingey the next, at least as far as he could tell. It was constantly evolving. And yet. And _yet_... there was never anything decent on the radio.

When they arrived at the house, Kitty turned to Logan with a frown, looking for confirmation that this was, in fact, their destination. “Are you renovating a house?” she asked.

“Yeah. That’s definitely it,” he said, and slotted the key into the lock. He held the door open for her, and she bounded up the stairs two at a time.

She got up to the landing well before him and opened the door at the top - despite her stance on doors, apparently she still opened the doors to other people's houses. When he joined her, she was looking around as if she were seriously considering the house renovation theory. The kitchen table was vacant and clear, as was the sofa.

“Don’t worry, kiddo, I made sure we weren’t followed,” he said, closing the door.

“What are you--?” Kitty started to turn to him, but she caught sight of Laura peeking around the corner of the wall, sizing her up.

Laura stepped out from behind the wall. She was assessing Kitty with everything she had, and she was making a show of it; eyes flicking up and down, brow sternly angled, weight on the balls of her feet.

“Laura, this is Kitty. Kitty, Laura.”

Kitty stammered, “Uh, h… hi. Nice to meet you.” She held out a tentative hand.

Laura sniffed the air suspiciously and stared at her hand. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what to do, it was that she was trying to determine if it was worth the risk. Kitty withdrew her hand before she could decide, and the house fell into tense silence.

“She’s not a threat, Sweet Tooth,” Logan said. He walked over to the kitchen cupboards and starting flipping through them, making a mental list of things to stock up on. “Did you eat breakfast already?” he asked.

Laura nodded. “Did'ya put maple syrup on it?” he followed up.

She nodded again. He sighed. “You can’t just put maple syrup on everything. You brush your teeth after?”

She froze. Deer caught in headlights.

“Go brush ‘em. Just like I showed you, two minutes.” As she shut the door of the bathroom, he tried to tell himself that eventually, she would stop having that panicked look on her face when she realised she’d forgotten something small. She’d stop expecting punishments for everything. She’d be okay. He’d make sure of it.

He looked at Kitty. She was bursting to talk, he could tell by the look on her face. “How could you not tell me about this?!” she exclaimed. Even if Laura hadn’t had advanced hearing, she would have heard it. Hell, the neighbours probably heard it, too.

“I haven’t told anyone, Kitty,” he said. “That’s kinda why you’re here, remember?”

“I have so many questions,” she put the heels of her hands to her forehead. “How long have you known about her? Who’s her mom? Where has she been? Does she have the same powers as you? Why—” She frowned. “Why is she a secret?”

He leaned onto the kitchen counter. “She found me a week ago.” He sucked on his teeth before he could muscle out an answer for the next few questions. “Some very bad people created her to be a weapon. And she doesn’t want to be around anybody else in case the people who hurt her come after her. I'm... all she has. I have to look after her.”

She took this in. “But—we could protect her at the Institute. That’s… that’s what the X-Men are for. We could all help. You don’t have to do it by yourself.”

Laura came out of the bathroom and hovered close to the wall. She wasn’t exactly up for having a playmate.

“Let’s take a walk,” Logan said to Kitty.

It was an alright day out. Not nice enough for many other people to be walking, but it was fine. Laura couldn’t hear them once they were outside the house, but he didn’t start talking until it was almost out of sight.

“You remember what I said when you asked why you couldn’t just get Charlie to erase Ogūn’s brainwashing from your head?” he asked.

She frowned at the sudden change of subject, but answered, “You said I had to beat Ogūn on my own terms, or I’d never be rid of him. The Professor’s powers wouldn’t fix it, they’d just cover it up.”

“Right. You remember what else?”

She stopped him. “What does this have to do with Laura?”

“Be patient, kiddo.” He followed a pair of birds chasing each other with his eyes. “If Charles had found out about what happened to you in Japan, he would have tried to fix you whatever I said. If he finds out about Laura, he’ll do the same. And it won’t help. Do you remember what else I said?”

“That you had the scars to prove it,” she said, starting to understand. “But I thought… I thought the Professor was helping you.”

“He is. I’m… I’m better than I was. But Chuck isn’t the only one that’s ever shuffled things around in my head. When I first came to the Institute, my past was just a white haze. I couldn’t even tell you what century I was born in.”

He was looking down the street in the direction of the house. This street, this town, it was a picturesque suburbia. The perfect place for a boring story about a happy childhood. He hoped.

“Laura’s different. She hasn’t been scrambled like me. What she needs is time, and distance. And the… closest to normal I can manage to scrape together.”

“How did you afford the house?” Kitty asked, nosy as ever. “You said you couldn’t afford another ticket to the Dazzler concert for you to come with us last month.”

Well, he was going to be busted for that one eventually. “Disco Ball sells the X-Men tickets to her gigs on a discount, pun’kin. It was twenty bucks.”

She gaped, scandalised, “But you said you wanted to come!”

“If you believed that, it’s on you,” he rolled his eyes. “I once proved to you I wasn’t a doppelganger by saying I hated disco.”

She pouted. “Even the toughest hearts can change, Wolverine.”

He looked at his watch. “I should get you back to class,” he said, and started back down the sidewalk.

“Oh, but this awful headache!” she lamented, leaning on his shoulder dramatically.

“Can it, kiddo. I’m not raising a truant.” He only realised a few seconds later what he’d said, but Kitty looked oblivious, taking in the scenery as they walked, so he tried to push it to the back of his mind.

Now if she could just psychically conceal this little day trip until the end of time, they’d be free and clear. Fuck, they were so screwed.

“So, when you were worrying about the Big Guy’s birthday all week,” he said, once they were back in the car on their way to the school, “you were actually worried about me?”

“Of course I was worried about you!” she said, throwing her hands up. “You were acting totally weird. And I knew if you thought I was worried about you, you’d just push harder and I’d never figure out what was going on.”

He had taught this kid too well for his own good. He didn’t know how the scales balanced up; what she’d learned from him had got her out of some jams, but she seemed to get into more than her fair share of trouble because of it, too.

“I was just trying to have your back,” she said, quietly. “Like you do for me.”

He exhaled through his nose. “I know, kiddo. ‘ppreciate it.” He switched to his instructor voice, “But don’t ever do it again, y’hear me? Some things just ain’t your business.”

They made it back to the school midway just as the mid-morning break was starting. “Remember you’ve got a headache,” he said.

“Right,” she pointed a finger gun at him. She was clearly itching to go, but something was making her hesitate. Suddenly, she wrapped her arms around him. Her voice was muffled in his jacket. “You can talk to me too, you know. If it gets too much.”

He patted her on the back. “Get gone, kiddo,” he said, and she pulled away. “Nothing more suspicious than someone giving Wolverine a hug.”

On Tuesday morning, Logan shut himself in the geography classroom and started marking papers. He was helping to cover for Storm while she was on a long-overdue vacation, so it wasn’t a task he usually had to do, but he was glad for the distraction.

He’d had his first session instructing in the Danger Room since Laura found him the previous afternoon. Seeing the teenagers blast hard-light machines with their powers and apply military strategy to their plan made his brow furrow. Rahne had asked him to quit glaring at her and tell her what was wrong with her form.

They were learning to control their powers. They were learning how to be _superheroes_. But he couldn’t take his mind off the little girl engineered to be a weapon that he’d left drawing a picture of a deer that morning.

“When are we ever going to uuuuuuse this?” one of the kids would complain, about literally any class, at least once a week. Sometimes they said out loud, “We won’t need it to be X-Men.” Other times they just thought it.

“Knowing how the landscape works and how it’s used can save your ass in any number of situations,” he had answered most recently. “Trust me. You don’t want to be in the field with your life depending on knowing about the formation of limestone, and realise you didn’t study hard enough for your geography exam.”

These kids didn’t know how lucky they were. He couldn’t remember ever taking a single formal lesson in his childhood. One of the first prompts Charles had ever given him during their memory sessions was about his school. Supposedly, memories of school were often very strongly preserved, because of how important they were in adolescent development.

But if Logan had ever had memories of a teacher in his childhood, they had been scrubbed clean so thoroughly that there was no trace left behind at all. The word 'teacher' brought back learning how to fire a gun. How to swing a sword. How to use his centre of gravity in a fight.

Shit. He glanced at the clock on the wall. He was late for his session with Charles. When he shut the geography room door behind him, he heard the Professor’s wheels on the carpet.

“Ah, Logan, there you are,” he said. “I was just coming to find you.”

“Yeah,” he scratched the back of his neck, “I lost track of time.”

As they made their way to Charles’ study, he observed, “You’ve never forgotten a session before.”

“Well, y’know,” Logan said, trying to shrug it off. “There’s a lot going on. I didn’t really notice how much Storm had to do around here until she took a break for a month.” He took his usual seat opposite the desk.

“Mmm,” he said. Maybe suspicious was too strong a word, but he certainly wasn’t oblivious. Without further comment, his eyes fluttered shut. “Now, Logan—“

“I know the drill, Teach,” he cut in, partly to buy himself some time to get his thoughts in order. As well as he could, at least, with a brain as screwed up as his was. “Peaceful thoughts,” he said on the exhale, and he joined Charles in darkness.

He drifted back. Before the X-Men, before Department H. His thoughts stuttered as he passed by Weapon X, snatched at him, wanting to linger in the pain. He let it roll off him. It was oil, and he was water, and he was going on his way. As far back as he could reach.

Army. Trenches. Mud, gunfire, people’s insides. Nothing new.

- _Try to find something softer, Logan_ \- Charles prompted, and he cast a thought to whether the war was hurting him, whether he was feeling the pain that Logan was numb to.

- _Take me somewhere safe._ \- His thoughts were even, measured. He didn’t feel threatened by Logan’s mind, not any more, not after six years of learning how not to cut himself on broken shards of memory.

Cherry blossoms blew in the wind. The pink petals dappled the blue sky and white clouds. _Safe_. He was sitting in the shade, under one of the trees. He’d been there for a while. He was tracking the movements of a wagtail in the branches with his ears. There was a fox den not far away, and if the bird got much closer, it would be dinner.

The memory looped. He only had this thirty seconds; he could stretch it out, make the quiet longer, make the birds sing slower. He could freeze the blossoms dancing in the air. But this was all he had of it. Still, he wanted to stay. It was peaceful. It was safe.

He felt a tug at the edges of his thoughts, and the thread unravelled.

“There is a storm coming,” said a voice. Not an urgent warning, just a gentle reminder. She was speaking Japanese. A cup was passed to him, warmth seeping through the sides, and raspberry filled his nostrils.

He was noticing the careful way she cupped her hands around her cup. “We should go inside soon,” she added, but sat on the grass with him, leaning into his shoulder. He breathed in the raspberry, and felt the hum of life all around him. He was startled by a chink of sunlight hitting his eye through the blossoms as it sank towards the horizon, and he felt suddenly her absence.

There was another tug at his subconscious. The storm rolled in fast.

By the time he was on his feet, the sky was dark with clouds. He was barely three steps in the house’s direction when the first lightning flashed, and the thunder was only two beats behind. He was clutched by a fear, imprecise and indiscriminate.

- _Get me out of here._ -

It was a wild feeling, impossible to satisfy, and it was stretching his heart and squashing his lungs. The darkness within the house loomed. His fear grew with it, with every second that electricity charged the air.

- _Charles, stop._ -

There was something in his head screaming at him to turn away. He didn’t want to see what was waiting for him, what he’d locked away in a lonely corner of his mind, just like everything else. There was a static in the air, a tension like a balloon about to pop.

- _Charles-!_ -

The balloon popped, and the balloon was his stomach, and he was in agony. He couldn’t see, he was in too much pain to hear, all he could do was feel was the wet, hot blood. His arms were slick with it, his knees were soaked in it, and his intestines must have been spilling out all over the floor because he felt an excruciating emptiness in his gut.

Lightning flashed through the window. He saw red. The rest of the world was in greyscale.

“ ** _STOP._** ”

…

 

His arms were trembling over his stomach when warm, yellow light flooded his consciousness. Charles was talking. Logan couldn’t stop clutching his arms; it felt like he had wires holding his digits in position, like a puppet in a stop motion show. He tasted acid.

“We were close to something, Logan,” he was saying. “We almost had it. A piece of your past.”

That void was still there, in his guts. There was no blood, or stormwinds, or raspberry tea, but his senses couldn’t shake the emptiness that had been carved into his memory. Maybe it had always been that way, and he just hadn’t known what was missing until now.

“Don’t think I want that one back,” he said, and it came out as a murmur. He got to his feet awkwardly, his centre of gravity skewed.

“Logan…”

He couldn’t pick and choose which memories to reclaim. Bad memories were part of him as much as good memories were. Painful experiences would give him the best explanations of why he was like he was. He’d heard it all before. “You don’t need to give me the speech.”

It was alright for Charles. He could shut it off whenever he wanted, close his mind and just stop seeing it, stop feeling it, stop living it. “Let’s review what we’ve learned,” he said. Like a businessman at a chair meeting.

“Let’s not.” He walked from the office with Charles calling after him. He didn’t want him to turn around enough to get back inside his head and make him. He wasn’t sure what that meant.

Logan’s check-up on the Blackbird could take a half-hour, if it needed to be taken out soon. But today he triple-checked everything, took extra care with every piece of the procedure. He was trying to let the mechanics of the jet take over, fill his brain with something else. But even the stink of metal and oil couldn’t expel the raspberry scent from his memory, what felt like his _only_ memory.

Raspberry and cherry blossom and freshly laundered clothes, and then rain and wood and his insides. He was trying to remember her name. Her face. Anything more than the delicate way she held her hands around a teacup.

There was a familiar _BAMF_ , and the smell of brimstone briefly came up against the wall of raspberry before falling away. “It’s time for dinner,” Kurt announced.

Logan had his arm in one of the engine compartments of the jet, almost up to his shoulder. He grunted in acknowledgement, not turning to look at him. He tested the tightness of the valve as if it was an all-consuming task. Without another word, Kurt disappeared from the hangar.

Charles was right. The memory was almost something. He couldn’t piece anything together from the fragment he had, only slide it into a vague place on a vague timeline of his life. He’d felt safe there. He must have been in Japan for a long time to get that comfortable.

And then there were the years there that were already accounted for, at least partially. His time spent with Ogūn had a different smell to it - sharper, with a more defined direction. And more hostile. Whoever the gentle voice in this new memory was, he hadn’t had her when he’d trained with Ogūn. If he was still alive, Logan might have been able to ask him.

Not that Logan could have trusted a word that that tricky bastard said, mind you. No, no reality in which Ogūn was alive was a good one. That was one death he couldn’t let himself regret.

Once he ran out of things to do on the plane itself, he started repacking the parachutes. Scott always did them perfectly, checking before and after each mission, but Logan needed something for his hands to do. At first, the pressure to pack them correctly pushed everything else to the back of his mind, but the movements became repetitive and allowed for his thoughts to push back.

He heard Kurt’s voice coming through the door of the plane. “Logan? Are you in there?”

He'd finished everything he could possibly do in the jet, and now he was sat opposite the door with his fists clenched. The muscles in his forearms were tensing and relaxing. His body wanted his claws out. His brain didn’t. There was a battle going on, between his logical mind telling him there was no gaping hole in his gut and no attacker, and his instincts telling him that he was surrounded by danger.

“I brought beer,” Kurt offered.

Logan opened the door and resumed his place on the floor while Kurt climbed into the plane. He reached for one of the beer bottles in Kurt’s hand, but he flicked his tail and wrapped it around the neck of the bottle, holding it out of his reach.

“Eat this first,” he said, handing him a Tupperware tub of mac and cheese.

“If I was hungry, I'd've got something,” he grumbled and put the box town, glaring at the beer bottle that was being guarded by Kurt’s tail.

“You haven’t eaten since this morning. You can’t _not_ be hungry,” he insisted.

He stuck the fork into the pasta a few times without eating it. “You know Chuck’s sessions kill my appetite.”

“Which is why you usually eat beforehand,” he added.

The smell of the cheese was making his stomach gurgle so bad that he was almost sure it would jump right out of his gut to get at it. Reluctantly he stabbed the fork into the box again and shovelled some of it into his mouth.

“There. You happy?” he scowled at Kurt once he’d finished his mouthful. It was taking an embarrassing amount of restraint not to keep digging in. He felt like he was going to throw up.

Kurt moved the beer bottle an inch closer to them. “It gets closer the more you eat,” he said, putting his chin in his hand.

“What, am I a baby?” he grumbled and shoved another fork into his mouth.

“If you’re going to bribe your children with alcohol, I hope you never have any,” he replied.

Logan shut up and earned his beer. Cold and bitter. Exactly not like raspberry tea.


	7. Chapter 7

The minute hand on the clock was approaching 5:07pm. Laura watched the second hand tick from her cross-legged perch on the kitchen table.

The town hall clock chimed before it reached the 12 and she wound the clock to 5:00 before the tower finished its melody. Now the clock showed the right time.

She looked around the house as if something should have changed, but it felt the same. There would suddenly be a book out of place, or a spot of macaroni cheese sauce on the floor, or an incredibly quickly-woven spider’s web. But it was spotless, just like the last dozen times she had gone over it.

Something felt wrong. Something restless in the back of her mind when she sat down to watch TV. She had thought it was the dirt, and then the organisation, and then the clock. But the feeling wouldn’t go away. There was something wrong in this house and she couldn’t figure out what.

Unless it was something outside the house. Something watching, waiting for the right time to take her. To stick her full of needles and take away her new clothes and shave her hair back down. Only, now was a perfect time. They had no reason to wait, no reason at all.

Maybe it was her. That she shouldn’t be here, she shouldn’t be staying still. She should leave again. Life was easier on the road, more straightforward. On the road, it was just survive and hide and keep on moving. People complicated things.

But leaving didn’t feel right, either. She was becoming attached to this place, to this house, no matter how many times she told herself not to. It was no wonder she was starting to be lulled into comfort here; where she could get nice food that she didn’t dig out of trash cans and a bed more pleasantly warm than anything she’d ever felt. And Logan. Whatever Logan was to her.

He’d called her _daughter_ that day in the clothes shop. For easiness, for cover, but it had rolled off his tongue like it belonged there. Was that what he thought of her? Was that what you called your genetic clone? “Daughter”?

The children in the cartoons had mommies and daddies. They had brothers and sisters and dogs and cats, and went to school and played at the park. Those things didn’t feel like they belonged to her. They were part of some other life, a fairytale life, where weapons got to be little girls.

Climbing out the window, up the gutter, and onto the roof was easy. The first night in the house, she had tested the sturdiness of the gutter outside her bedroom window. It was always important to have an escape route.

This little corner of North Salem didn’t look much different from here; the house wasn’t tall enough to change the perspective that much. All it did was make her feel more tangibly removed from the lives going on below. She felt closer to the starlings swooping and swirling above, perching restlessly on the branches of small trees before taking off again.

It was a warm day, although the wind chilled her and ruffled her hair. It blew puffy clouds across an otherwise clear sky, and for a while, she just watched. It was always different, but there was a reassuring consistency to its difference. She didn’t hear Logan arrive.

“You up there, kid?” he asked. From its volume and direction, she pictured that he had his head out of her bedroom window.

She was starting to trust his voice, his footsteps. Stupid. Dangerous. But when he asked that question, she didn’t feel as if he was waiting for an excuse to punish her. There was no malice, or disparagement, only a question which he wanted the answer to.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Dinner’ll be on the table in a half-hour,” he said. He disappeared back into the house.

She had been getting used to the sounds of the neighbourhood over the last few days. Back in San Francisco, in all the cities she’d stopped off in, there was a constant rhythm under the air. Traffic was never far away, and music and chatter forced its way through walls in all directions.

Strangely, this part of North Salem sounded closer to the forest than it did a city. The people shuffling around sounded not dissimilar to the fauna of the woods, and the gardens surrounding the houses made the buzz of insects more prevalent than the buzz of traffic.

The sound of absent-minded singing seemed somehow at home here. Some of the lyrics were replaced with a vague set of hums, which only made it seem more comfortable. It took Laura another few moments to realise that the source of the song was Logan.

She slipped back in through the window and watched him work in the kitchen. Every so often he’d hum another wordless verse and throw in a few words he could remember.

“What are you singing?”

“Oh, Jesus, kid,” he startled, and then shook it off. “Uh, I dunno. Some Dazzler song probably. Kitty had it on the radio when I dropped her off at dance class. Can’t get the infernal thing out of my head.”

He was stirring something in a pot on the stove. He looked over his shoulder at where she was standing. “This’ll be ready in a few minutes. Why don’t you… get out the plates and forks.”

She did as he asked and sat down at the table. Whatever it was that was cooking, it smelled new. Something she hadn’t tried before. When he piled some of it onto her place with some rice, she immediately dug into it with her fork and shovelled it into her mouth.

“It’s hot—” Logan protested, a little too late.

It was hot, but she kept chewing, excited by the flavours that were hitting her senses like a baseball bat to a windchime. The spices themselves gave off a warm feeling, separate from the temperature, that fascinated her. She took another forkful.

He sighed and dished some onto his own plate. There was something sweet on her tongue, like the red topping of a pizza. It was salty too. “What is it?” she queried around the mouthful.

“Chilli con carne. Don’t talk with your mouth full.” He stabbed at the rice with his fork. It wasn’t a particularly effective method of eating.

“Can you show me?” she asked.

He flicked a glance upwards. “I’m not exactly a master chef. I use a recipe. But…” he shrugged. “Sure. Next time I make it, I’ll show you.”

He was sitting funny. She had only just noticed. His shoulders were bunched up more than usual, and he seemed more closed off than he had in the past.

“Did I do something wrong?”

He looked up, a little blank. “What? No. Why d’you ask that?”

She studied his expression. Not angry, no. More… exhausted. She ignored his question in favour of a more useful observation. “You have not slept.”

His momentary concern slipped back into the tired apathy she had seen before. “I’m fine, kid. Don’t worry about it.” He punched a small mountain of food into his mouth to avoid further questioning.

She wanted to press. If he was not rested, he would not be able to defend himself well. He could not perform optimally while he was tired. But she didn’t want to make him angry. People were irritable when they were tired.

He had told her not to worry. So she would stay quiet.

After the meal was finished and the dishes dumped into the sink, he fell backwards onto the sofa and started flicking through channels. Laura was reading the spines of the DVDs that had been stacked on the bookshelf. Logan had brought them home the previous afternoon and mumbled something about “kid stuff”.

“You wanna watch one?” he asked. The remote was still poised towards the TV in one hand, like he’d caught sight of her and failed to process more than one thing at once. “Go pick one out.”

She knelt by the bookcase and looked through the DVDs more carefully. There were stories about princesses, and stories about heroes. Fairytales. She skimmed over Sleeping Beauty – she knew that story already. She wanted something new. A few minutes of deciding later, she picked out Cinderella.

It was another fairytale. It must be odd, Laura thought, to live in a world where wishes came true just by virtue of them being wishes.

\---

Logan heard a series of _BAMF_ s, getting steadily louder as Kurt poofed around the house. It wasn’t long before he appeared in the doorway of the library, reaching for the light switch before saying, “Oh, Logan, you’re still in here.”

“Sure as hell hope so,” he replied, barely looking up from the sheet of paper in front of him. If he unfocused his eyes, he may never focus them again.

He was still loitering in the frame of the door. “It’s… 3:42am,” he said.

“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Logan asked. His hand ticked a phrase with a red pen as if the instruction had been sent there by telegram.

“I’m _going_ to bed. That’s why I… shouldn’t _you_ be asleep?” he seemed a little dumbstruck. Probably tired.

“I got papers to grade,” he answered.

The library contained the kind of silence that meant no one was moving. Logan finally resigned himself to looking up. Kurt was in his pajamas, tail swishing sleepily, but his face was awake and concerned. “I’m sure the essays won’t run off before tomorrow, Logan,” he said, with a smile that was all too easy to decipher.

His forehead bunched with a headache that had been steadily building for the better part of the day. He couldn’t hold his eyes in enough focus to read the words on the page any more. He dropped his pen on the desk.

“If some crazy interdimensional paper-thieves steal these tonight, I am one hundred percent pinning that on you, Fuzzball.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.

There was a small pause, and then an encouraging, “Are you coming to bed?”

“It a bit,” he said. His eyes were hidden behind his hand. Another pause. Another lack of movement. “Whadd’you want, Elf?” he asked irritably.

“Nothing,” he lied. “Goodnight, Logan.” _BAMF_.

He went for his usual run in the early morning, in the light of the sunrise, and as long as he was moving his head felt clearer. The pump of his muscles to an invisible rhythm. This was better; this was normal. He’d neglected this too much. That was all it was, his schedule had been so erratic lately that he’d fizzled out. He could get a routine going again. He could be better.

By the time he got back to the mansion, he was almost not stubborn enough to deny it any longer. His exhaustion had been using him as a chariot, and as soon as he slowed down, it caught up with him.

Back inside, he saw Scott power-walking towards the basement stairs.

“Early start, Cyke,” he said, but even as the words left his mouth, he knew it was something more. “We got a mission?”

“Uhhhhhhhh,” Scott said, not at all suspiciously.

The elevator doors pinged, and Piotr appeared from behind them, arms crossed, in his metal form. “Cyclops, you are needed in the hangar. Oh. Hello, Wolverine.”

“What’s going on?” Logan scowled, very ready to lose his temper.

“Nothing,” Scott said hurriedly. “We’ve got it handled. Keep an eye on things here.” He disappeared into the elevator and slammed the button that closed the doors.

Logan walked down the stairs and strode into the hangar. “Jean. What’s going on?”

When Jean met his eyes, she had the look on her face that meant she was doing a cursory scan of his brain. He didn’t have time to protest it before she said, “It’s fine, Logan. The Professor’s just sending out a team to deal with something. We don’t need everyone.”

“Did someone go find Cyclops already?” Banshee asked, popping his head out of the jet. “Getting a bit of an itchy foot, here, loves. Oh, hi Wolverine. No one told me you were joining us.”

“Exactly who _is_ joining you?” he asked.

Jean turned her head curtly, and his open mouth fell shut. Either she’d told him telepathically to stay quiet, or she just had that mean of a glare. He sank back into the jet, not wanting to involve himself any further.

“What’s going on, Red?” he demanded. “Why are you all keeping me in the dark?”

“Ask the Professor when he’s out of Cerebro. We have to go,” she started towards the jet, and Cyclops and Colossus were hot on her tail.

“Jean!” he yelled, although some part of him, beneath the short-fused anger, knew it was pointless.

“Get clear of the jet, please, Logan,” Forge said over the speaker. Logan flipped him the middle finger.

“Uncalled for.”

He stalked from the hangar and towards the Cerebro room. If this mission had something to do with him, what right did they have to keep him from it? He should be first on the plane.

“Hiya, Wolverine,” Rahne greeted cheerfully, stepping in front of him with a wave.

“What’re you doing down here?” he asked, although it was more of an observation than an actual question.

“Well, school’s cancelled today ‘cause of the mission, so I thought I’d come down to the Danger Room to practice some moves, only I need an adult to help me operate it,” she explained.

“I’m a little busy, Highland Fling,” he dismissed, his eyes fixed back on the Cerebro room.

She ducked in front of him again. “Okay, truth? Mrs Grey-Summers asked me to keep ye out of Cerebro while the Professor is still in there.” And then she added, leaning back slightly, “Please dinnae stab me.”

Logan growled and turned towards the stairs, but neglected to stab Rahne. He thought he heard her breathe an actual sigh of relief.

Oh his way out the front door, Sam jumped into view with much more enthusiasm than he usually had on any given morning. “Hi, Logan!”

“Buzz off, Beanstalk. Not in the mood.”

“Right, well, I was just thinking, you know—” he tapped his fingers together, falling into step beside him.

“Get it overwith, will'ya? What're your instructions?” Logan snapped.

He seemed a little thrown off, but answered, “Uhh, not to let you off the grounds?”

“Fine,” he scowled, and pushed open the front door.

The garden of the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters was nothing like the woods that lay outside the grounds. The flowerbeds were meticulously organised and placed. The hedges stayed trimmed in perfect lines, like soldiers, along with the brick paths that crisscrossed and curved at calculated angles. Even the unevenly-shaped stepping stones embedded in the turf had a certain manicured quality about them.

Closer to the mansion, just on the outskirts of the garden area, was the greenhouse that Hank referred to as his “outdoor lab.” It was empty today, but on the other side of the grounds, Logan could hear Berto and Rogue getting their asses handed to them in basketball by Kitty and Theresa.

“You definitely used your powers just then!”

“I did not! Just because I can jump kind of high…”

Logan watched the plants soak in the sun until the dew stopped sparkling in the grass. This mission that the others were on; it wasn’t personal. It wasn’t to do with him. If it had been, there’s no way he would be this in the dark. There’s no way he had to be _this_ uninvolved.

Charles just didn’t want him on the team.

“I really must ask the children to help maintain the garden while Storm is away,” Charles mused as he made his way down the garden path to the bench Logan was sat on. “She won’t be pleased if she comes back to find it in disarray.”

The garden was still practically immaculate. It needed fine-tuning in a few places, that was all, and Logan was pretty sure that Ororo would be infinitely more concerned about the kids’ attempts to ‘help’ than she would be about it getting a little scruffy in her absence.

“Are you gonna quit patronising me, Charles?” Logan asked. “I’m older than all of my babysitters combined.”

“Now, I think that’s rather unfair,” he said. He was steering his wheelchair along the brick path, making his way to Logan. “At your age, approximate though it is, that would be the case even if we combined the entire student body.”

“Kind of my point, Teach,” he growled as he caught up and stopped in front of him. “I don’t need babysitting.”

“The children are simply concerned about you. As are the X-Men.” He had a lot of sincerity in his eyes when he added, “As am _I_.”

Logan sniffed and looked away. The smell of honeysuckle was potent in this part of the garden. “I’m fine, Chuck.”

It was going to take more than that to convince him. “Tell me, Logan, when did you last get a full night of sleep? Hm?” He was using the same voice that he used on the kids when they ‘forgot’ their homework. He raised an eyebrow, “Really? Well, truly, I commend you on staying on your feet this long.”

Logan stared through the fence at the woods beyond. If he’d known that his run this morning was going to be his last trip off the grounds for the foreseeable future…

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, Logan,” Charles said. If he wasn’t too dignified, he’d have rolled his eyes. “It isn’t as if this is a permanent measure.”

“How long are you going to keep me cooped up before you believe that I’m fine?” he asked through his teeth.

Charles leaned his elbow on his arm rest and rested his temple against his knuckles. There was something wry in his expression when he said, “Now that rather depends on you, doesn’t it?”

“Forget it,” Logan growled, and walked further down the path. He heard the motor in Charles’ chair following him. “You’re not getting inside my head, Charlie.”

“If I could just diagnose the _problem_ …”

“There’s no _problem_.” He rounded on him. There was a pale flash in his subconscious as he said, “I'm just _sick_ of people poking their fingers into my brain.”

Charles didn’t flinch. Even-voiced, he asked, “Don’t you want to get your memories back? What we uncovered in our session on Tuesday—”

“I want to understand why I’m _like this_ ,” he held out his hands, his soldier’s hands that should have been withered and wasting. “But if it means feeling in excruciating detail what they did to me—“

Molten lava running over his bones, boiling his skin from the inside—

“—what they made me _into_ —“

Bleeding hands, snow stained pink—

“—what they made me _do_ —“

The smell of blood and concrete dust.

“--what I—“

A feeling like static in his limbs.

_What I chose to do._

He had to breathe. Had to clamp down on the throbbing in his heart, keep the berserker chained up. He couldn’t go into a rage here. He couldn’t afford it.

“I can help control your flashbacks,” Charles said. “And your rages. This is what we’ve been working towards.”

“You ain’t a fucking shrink!” he yelled. “You ain’t a brain surgeon! You’re just a _man_ who pulled the ability to screw with people’s heads out've a lucky dip, and you think it means you can _fix_ ‘em.”

The air was full of honeysuckle. A sweet, sweet scent, almost nauseatingly so. He focused on that. And then the breeze hitting his face. The way the flowers insisted on mixing their colours, on being untameable. That Ororo loved that about them.

Charles was keeping his composure well, considering. “I understand what you’re feeling, Logan.”

Nothing made his teeth grate like a phrase like that from a man like Charles.

“You don’t,” he said. He was burning hot, but he had a lid on it now. He had control. He was measured. “You’ve observed it, Xavier. You’ve _watched_. But if you think for a second that’s the same thing as living it then you’re more of a dumbass than I thought.”

He didn’t appreciate being called a dumbass. It was plain on his face, if only for a moment. “Well,” he said, stiff, “thank you for your honesty.”

“Don’t mention it,” he replied. He strode onto the grass and made his way back up towards the house. He glimpsed Sam and Roberto ducking out of view from the drawing room window.

\---

The grounds were cast in shades of indigo, and the only light left to be seen was the orange glow from Logan’s cigar. He watched the smoke dissipate as he exhaled. The last warmth from the daylight had long faded, giving way to a deep chill. He considered retrieving a sweater from indoors, but then he heard the front door swing open.

Rogue was still dressed for the sunshine, and seemed to already be regretting not wrapping up in something warmer, but she descended the ramp regardless, holding onto her arms. With her came the light from the motion-sensitive porch light.

Logan turned his head away from her and blew hard, sending smoke billowing out to the open air. He dropped his cigar onto the ground.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said, leaning on the bannister. “I’m a big girl.”

“Big girl without lung cancer,” he said, grinding it into gravel with his shoe. He tried not to notice how Rogue’s tone was laced with knowing melancholy. “I’d prefer to keep you that way, darlin’.”

She didn’t respond for a while. He watched an owl swoop low over the grass, probably snatching up some small unsuspecting mouse. The sounds of the nighttime forest leaked through the gates. He wondered how much of it she could hear.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” she said. He didn’t look at her face; it probably looked just as defeated as her voice sounded, and he wasn’t sure how much of that he could take.

His eyes dropped to his feet, and his hands went into his pockets. “Yeah.”

“For how long?”

He made a sidelong glance at her. “I thought you were a big girl?”

Her eyes looked dark and sad in the shadow of the porch light. He felt a pang of guilt. “I’m still allowed to miss you,” she said quietly, and looked away from him, hunching her shoulders.

He exhaled as if there was still smoke in his lungs. “I dunno, pun’kin. Until things cool down here.”

“You weren’t even planning on saying goodbye, were you?” she asked.

The sadness and anger in her voice was perfectly blended to break a man’s heart. His chest ached as he struggled for an excuse, but he didn’t have one. “You know I’m no good at goodbyes,” he said feebly, and hated himself.

She didn’t look at him, but he could see how angry she was. “Hey,” he said, trying to sound more upbeat, “give it a week, I bet you won’t even notice I’m gone, Stripes.” This hadn’t been the right thing to say; he saw her fists clench.

The next thing he knew, she had her arms clamped around him from behind, and he could feel her hair brushing his shoulders. It was such an unexpected move that he didn’t have time to react properly.

The mesh fabric on her arms was pressing against his chest, and the cloth of her gloves was gripping onto his shoulders.

A choked, quiet moment passed. “What if this mesh stuff hadn’t been thick enough to stop your skin from touching mine?” he chastised. He was trying to do his teacher voice. He wasn’t sure he was succeeding.

“Then you would be in a coma and you wouldn’t leave. Win-win,” she mumbled.

They fell quiet. He was starting to think that her plan was to hang onto him until he changed his mind.

“Stupid old man,” she sniffed. She loosened her grip and he turned to face her. He brushed a lock of her hair out of her face, careful not to touch her skin.

“Just stay ‘til the morning,” she requested. “So you can say goodbye to everyone.”

He sighed. “I dunno how well that’ll go over with the Professor.”

“Screw the Professor,” she said, and there was a hot edge in her voice that said she meant it. “He doesn’t get to decide we’re not allowed to say goodbye.”

“I dunno, kiddo,” he said. “Maybe.”

She didn’t seem thrilled by his answer, but apparently she decided it would do. She turned and walked back up the ramp, and the front door clicked shut behind her.

Logan stood in the cold until after the porch light went off.


	8. Chapter 8

The first time Laura heard the doorbell, she almost bolted out of the window.

“It’s probably nothing,” Logan gestured for her to sit back down as he got to his feet, joints groaning. He pressed the intercom by the door. “Yeah?”

“Hi, Logan!” Kitty greeted.

He took a moment to make sure he had heard that right. He couldn’t be dreaming, not with the kind of sleep he’d been getting lately.

“Uhh… Logan? Are you there?”

“Half-Pint… what the hell are you doing here.” He racked his brain for any memory of telling Kitty he was leaving. If he was getting short-term amnesia as well as the old stuff, he could be in some real trouble.

“Are you gonna let me up?” she asked expectantly.

He released the button and buzzed her in. He glanced at Laura, still poised and ready for a quick getaway, and he shook his head. He heard her bounding up the stairs, and opened the door with a cheery, “Good morning!”

She kicked off her shoes – having decided some time ago to stop attempting to phase her feet out of them while keeping her socks intact – and put a canvas bag on the kitchen table.

“You can’t just show up here,” Logan told her.

She looked at him as if he had said something very obviously dumb. “Well, you don’t have a phone. How else am I supposed to see you now that you’ve left the Institute?”

She’d been talking to Rogue. He sighed, “I dunno, kid, I thought I might’ve finally got rid of you for good.”

She grinned and bumped his shoulder. “Anyway, I brought presents,” she added, tugging on the canvas bag. “This place is way too bare. There’s like, old books I don’t read anymore and stuff. And that paint set I got, you remember? I haven’t used it.” She was pulling things out and putting them on the table. Laura, ever curious but ever wary, was slowly inching closer to get a better look.

“And…” Kitty trailed off, losing a bit of her momentum, and glanced up at Logan before reaching into the bag again. He frowned, trying to guess what she could have brought that had her worried, when she extracted a familiar wooden box. “I brought your Japanese tea set.”

He thumbed the corner of the box after she set it down. He hadn’t opened it since he was in Japan the most recent time, when his engagement to Mariko was formally called off. She and Kitty had always got on well. “You know I’m not leaving the school for good, right kiddo?” he said.

“Yeah, well, you know. The place gets blown to pieces every few years anyway, so… it’ll be safer with you,” she shrugged.

He grunted. “Fair enough.”

She pulled out something else and stepped closer to Laura – she stepped back. Kitty took the cue and kept her distance, but she indicated the light blue plastic box in her hand. “This is my old Game Boy. It’s, uh, a games console, you just flip it open and put in a game here, see?” She showed her, and held it out towards Laura.

“You sure you want to give that one up, pun’kin?” Logan frowned. He watched Laura flip over the console and examine it, poking the buttons to no effect.

Kitty pointed, “The ON button is there. Yeah, I don’t play with it any more.” She leaned over to look at what was happening on the screen, and Laura only backed away a little. “Pokémon is in there right now. It’s like. An adventure game? You collect little animals to fight other people with little animals.”

Laura’s little face was processing. “Why?”

It was the first word she had spoken to Kitty. She beamed in response, but failed to come up with an answer. “It’s just fun. You can name all your animal friends, and—”

From where Logan was standing, it seemed like all that had cut Kitty off was sheer surprise. At the mention of naming things, Laura had brightened and tapped a button on the console.

“Uh, you can just override one of my saves,” Kitty told her. “I don’t need them anymore.” She met eyes with Logan and there was a moment where his heart lifted, sharing in the delight of getting a smile out of Laura. It was like a breath of fresh air in his lungs.

He gathered the dirty breakfast dishes from around the kitchen and turned on the tap in the sink while he listened to Kitty walking Laura through the first stage of the game, telling her to check hiding places for things she could take on her adventure. When it got to the naming of her first creature, Logan heard a rustle of paper and turned, his hands suspended in the soapy water.

Laura was scanning a crumpled piece of paper with serious determination. He could see Sharpie through the page in his quickest handwriting. Her eyes went up and down repeatedly, until she announced, “Emily,” and stuffed the list back into her pocket. She began keying it into the game. He scrubbed the plate in the sink more than was probably necessary.

Before Logan was done with the dishes, Kitty decided Laura didn’t need her help, and began placing her other gifts around the apartment. The books went onto the bottom shelf of the bookcase, the tea set box went onto to the empty top shelf, and she pondered the paint set for a few moments before placing it aside.

He joined her by the bookshelf. “Well, I’m definitely not going to be using that tea set if it’s up there,” he pointed out.

“Right,” she giggled, and reached up to take it down again, carefully. “Where do you want it?”

He eyed the bookshelf. The tea set was a pretty ceramic, simple but elegant teal and onyx. He suspected it was an expensive gift, although he hadn’t asked how much at the time, and probably never would. “Let’s take it out of this box,” he said.

The teapot and cups fit nicely on the shelf second from the top. Kitty slid the box back onto the top shelf, where it could look pretty in peace.

“So which, uh… little creatures have you found, Sweet Tooth?” Logan asked.

Laura held up the game for him to see her two companions – a little leaf lizard named Emily, and a raccoon-looking thing named Daniel.

“Cool,” he said. She had already turned her attention back to the game, and he turned and raised an eyebrow at Kitty, “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

She rocked on her heels. “I don’t know… shouldn’t she?”

“I’m workin’ on it,” he replied, irritable. He still hadn’t figured out how he was going to enrol Laura in school when she didn’t legally exist.

“I can help,” Kitty offered eagerly.

“I’ll handle it,” Logan bristled. The kid didn’t mean any harm by it, he knew that. She just wanted to help. It still rubbed him up the wrong way.

Kitty pressed her lips together in the way she did when she was trying to solve a puzzle. She gave a tiny shake of the head as she dismissed it and said, “Let’s go for a walk, all of us. It’s nice out.”

Although seemingly out of nowhere, he didn’t refuse. He’d been meaning to get Laura out of the house today anyway – he didn’t want it to become just another cage.

She left her game behind with the assurance that it would still be in the same place when they got back. She pulled on her favourite hoodie; the one with the rainbow and words ‘Always be Kind’ printed on the front. She’d worn it over her pajamas more than once – he’d asked if she was cold in her bed, and she’d said no. He supposed she just really liked it.

There was a line of people at the ice cream truck near to the park, kids and adults both. Kitty was looking at Logan hopefully, but she wasn’t saying anything. Meanwhile, Laura was doing what she always did in public; assessed threats, plotted exit routes, analysed social atmospheres. He wasn’t even sure she did it consciously, but he could tell by the look on her face.

He dug a ten dollar bill out of his jeans and handed it to Kitty. “Get me one while you’re at it.”

She grinned, and gestured for Laura to follow as she joined the queue. He made his way over to one of the benches that were dotted along the path and sat down. He could smell squirrels, and hear them scampering, too. The park was more restrained than the woods around Salem Center, but he could get used to it. He could get used to pretty much anything.

Adaption. It was a very human trait. Other animals either moved or evolved when a climate didn’t suit them. Humans – mutants more than most – stuck their heels in and adapted. They made it work. They made it _good_.

Kitty and Laura joined him on the bench and handed him his ice cream. The soft-serve was already melting in the unusually warm afternoon sun. He watched Laura continually lap up the drips with enthusiasm, and a smile subconsciously grew on his face.

“It good, Sweet Tooth?” he asked.

She nodded enthusiastically. Hot foods, cold foods. Sweet, sour, salty. He hadn’t come across anything yet that she didn’t like, although sugar did seem to be a favourite. It made grocery shopping easy, at least, much easier than at the mansion. Although not having Storm to reach the high shelves was proving… a challenge.

“Come on, let’s keep walking,” Kitty urged. She was trying to sound casual, and mostly succeeding. But he knew her. She was up to something.

“Can we stop by the library?” she asked, very deliberately, while standing directly in sight of the building.

“What’s in the library?” Logan asked flatly.

She smiled innocently. “Same things that are always in a library, old man. Books. Records. Internet access.”

“If this is just about checking your MySpace page…” he warned.

“It’s for school,” she promised with a groan.

“Which you should be in right now,” he added, but started towards the entrance across the street. He held a hand out to Laura automatically, and she took it after a moment’s consideration. “You skip out on a homework assignment that was due this morning? That why you’re here?”

She linked her arm through his. “Well, you’d know if you hadn’t gone AWOL.”

He huffed. “It’s very much ‘with leave’, darlin’, trust me. The Professor wanted me out of his sight just as much as I did.”

“I’m sure he’d give you a second chance…” she tried.

There was an itch on his lips for nicotine that he was trying to ignore. “Maybe I won’t give him one.” At Kitty’s upset face, he backpedalled. “I’ll come back eventually, Half-Pint. Like you said, I can’t get rid of you lot that easily.”

She was still frowning as they entered the library. Their exact destination must have been in the back of her mind, because she was still leading them with purpose in her steps as she questioned, “What about Ororo? And Kurt?”

He really, really wanted a cigar to chew on, but he would have been pushing it the public park, let alone the library. “What about ‘em?”

“They’ll miss you,” she answered.

The Fuzzball’s worried little face briefly flashed into his mind. “They’re grown-ups, Kitty. And we’re all used to spending time apart from each other.”

Kitty seemed to give up, and sat down at one of the computer terminals with her chin in her hand. She tapped and clicked away at the keyboard while Laura read the spines and backs of books in the nearest section – Biography.

“Laura, when’s your birthday?” she asked suddenly.

Laura turned around, answered, “I have six,” and then went back to browsing.

She thought about that for a moment, having not received an answer in the expected parameters. “Um… what day were you born? When did you take your… first breath.”

“03:15 MST, January 2nd, 1998.” Clinical. She had read that in a file. That thought almost distracted him from Kitty’s mysterious endeavour.

He leaned over her shoulder and peered at the computer screen. She was entering details into some kind of database. “What the hell are you doing, kiddo?”

“…School stuff?” she offered with a sheepish shrug. _Laura’s_ school stuff. She was getting good at telling lies – wrapping them up in the truth and tricky wording. He hated that he was impressed.

“I told you I would handle this,” he reminded her.

“I can help,” she insisted. Almost a snap, as if she was irritated at him for wasting her time. “What’s the point of learning how to hack databases and forge documents if you aren’t going to help people who need it?”

He was stern. “Kitty—”

She was sterner. “What’s your surname?” This was not a conversation; it was an interrogation.

“I don’t have one,” he replied. His brow was knitted together in a way that was starting to give him a headache.

“Do you really not have one, or is this an ‘all the X-Men only called me Wolverine for two years because I didn’t tell them my name was Logan’ situation?” she asked, and there was just a hint of humour in her voice.

“I really don’t have one. It’s just Logan.” That was the name barked at him by commanding officers in the dregs of his memory. The same name that he had clung to with every shred of his will as reality was torn to pieces around him. The same name that regularly greeted him with a drunken arm around the shoulder at Harry’s and a nod at the Princess.

Kitty directed her question to Laura instead. “Do you have a surname?” Then, before she could reply with a figure, added, “I don’t mean an alias. I mean a name.”

 _Not an alias. A name._ That was funny. All identities were aliases. One cover story after another to get you through the world. _I was a soldier. I used to work in community improvement. I have metal implants that strengthen my bones. I’m a teacher at a school for gifted children._ It was just one alias after another. Logan only got a taste of it and he understood exactly why Kurt refused to try and fit in.

“No,” Laura answered.

Kitty put her chin back in her hand and mumbled, “Maybe your surname is your _lack_ of a surname. You both have it in common.”

As Kitty tapped her fingers on the desk, staring into the computer screen, something surfaced in Logan’s mind. The rhythmic churn of a train on its tracks, and a name, said with fearful apprehension by a young voice.

“James,” he said.

Kitty snapped out of her screen-induced trance. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“Is that your surname? James?” she brightened. She had a wonderous quality in her voice like she’d made a fascinating archaeological find.

“No. I don’t know. It just feels right.” He shuffled his shoulders. The memory was barely there, but he could build something around it. On his way out of Alberta, a stowaway with scratchy burlap clothes and hacked-short hair. The first alias he’d ever chosen.

Kitty was really far too good at forging documents for a fifteen year old. He was impressed. He was even begrudgingly impressed when she chose their route back to the house so that it went by North Salem Middle School, and they could “stop in” to get the enrolment forms.

The clerk at the desk was a pointed woman who gave pointed looks. She told him, pointedly, that Laura would need a uniform before she came to school.

When they got back home, finally, Laura went straight to her Pokémon and verified that it hadn’t carried on without her.

“Hey, food first,” he directed. “Personal health comes before video games, Sweet Tooth.”

Sometime in the mid-afternoon, Kitty disappeared into the bathroom and re-emerged in her human workout clothes – she looked like she’d stepped off an roller rink. To be fair, the time she and the other kids had gone roller skating was probably one of the only times that she had to wear exercise clothes outside of the Danger Room or the ballet school.

“Can you spar with me?” she asked, twisting the back of her hair into a tiny ponytail.

Logan made sure they were looking at the same floorspace. “It’s not exactly the Xavier ballroom in here.”

She had her hands wrapped in bandages, like he showed her. She punched his shoulder, “The Professor doesn’t have a ballroom. And I meant outside, dummy.”

Laura was staring at them, GameBoy in hand. Every friendly swing of the arm and joking word as a threat to her; she didn’t know the difference yet. As he got up, he ruffled her hair, “Kit’s just playing around, kiddo.”

The patch of yard out back of the house wasn’t much more than a fenced-in rectangle of grass, and the soil was no crash mat. He wasn’t worried about bruising himself, having never actually experienced one, but his first few shots at Kitty were pulled, and she could tell.

“Stop it. I said I wanted to spar, not play make-pretend,” she criticised.

He grunted and dodged her attack. His countering kick went right through her leg while she caught him in the rib with a jab of her hand. Keeping one part of her dense while another phased; that was a nuanced move, one she hadn’t had even the faintest idea how to master a few months ago. As her teacher, he wished he could take credit.

She was good, but her centre of gravity was too high, and if he could only get a hit in it would be easy to knock her off balance. He focused on blocking her attacks until she started to flag, and then knocked her feet out from under her. Oh her way down, she gasped, squeezed her eyes, and then sank into the turf as if it was a trampoline.

She sprang back up and landed on her feet. She pinwheeled for a moment, and he could have taken advantage, but he was caught by surprise. He dropped his hands.

“How long have you been able to do that?” he asked.

She shrugged in the way she did when she had a very specific answer in mind that a supervising an adult would not appreciate.

“Kitty. How long?”

“I dunno. A couple weeks. I’ve always been able to walk underground,” she replied vaguely.

She’d got enough teacher talk from the other X-Men about the dangers of this particular move already; he could tell from the look on her face. There was no way anything critical he said would go in, even if it was something fairly sensible. Like not risking suffocation, for example.

“Seems like you’ve got pretty good control of it,” he said. “You must’ve been practicing it a lot.”

She smiled. “Yeah. It was hard to get the hang of. You need to push off with the right force otherwise you just end up bouncing in and out of the ground.”

“Doesn’t sound fun.” He started unwrapping his hands.

“You giving up already, old man?” she teased, hands on her hips.

He huffed. “I can’t beat you without claws, and we’re not going there without a medic in the immediate vicinity.”

“Boring,” she rolled her eyes.

“That’s me.” He took a swig from his water bottle. “Come on. There’s a hockey game on tonight, and I want to get you two fed before it starts.”

When Logan began tucking the sheets around Laura that evening, he remembered the school enrolment forms abandonned on the kitchen table. It felt too fast. She was still adjusting, and so was he. He already knew that school would add a layer of chaos into their lives, in some ways painfully predictable, and in others, excruciatingly surprising.

But she would always be adjusting. His life would always be chaotic. He couldn't put this off any longer; he needed to trust Laura to be out in the world, in amongst kids who had never been weapons and teachers who had never been superheroes.

Laura must have had the same things on her mind, because she asked, "Why do I have to go to school? I had all the necessary education at the Facility."

"The necessary education for espionage," he corrected. "North Salem Middle School teaches a different skillset."

"Like how to be a real person?" she suggested.

"You are a real person, Laura. You always have been." He said it with the kind of conviction he wished he'd had ten years ago. He almost went to kiss her forehead instinctively, but stopped himself. "Goodnight, Laura."

"Goodnight, Logan."

He was acutely aware that Kitty was watching him when he sat down on the sofa. She wasn’t trying to be discrete about it anymore, either; she had waited until Laura was put to bed, and now she was inviting him with inquisitive eyes to ask what had her so captivated.

He only briefly tried to block it out with the TV – there was only so much attention you could pretend to pay to ads. “What is it, pun’kin?” he sighed.

Logan remembered the sidelong looks she’d tried to sneak at him when he had first shown her Patch. A kind of interested ‘what else are you hiding?’ look, intrigued and deducting. Trying to parse out the rest of his secret identities. You got good at having secret identities when you were a transgender former-black-ops mutant. It was second nature, right alongside popping his claws and watching hockey games.

The look she had on her face now was almost the same, but it was more direct. And there was less fear of the unknown in it, although he truthfully might not have noticed her fear of Patch and his potential if he hadn’t compared it to this, right now. “You just seem like you’ve done this before.”

He hummed and sipped his beer. She took this as in invitation to press further. “Have you done this before?” she asked.

He sucked his tongue and watched the TV screen as if this car commercial was any different to the billion other car commercials he’d seen that week. “I honestly don’t know,” he replied.

“There must be something,” she said. “Some clue, some…”

Automatically, he reached for a memory, the kindest memory he had, and heat shot through him like a red hot arrow. “Stop it,” he snapped. “That’s not how it works, Kitty.” He realised he was massaging his hand as if he’d burned it and stopped. The heat was settling, healing, the same as they did everywhere in his body as long as he remembered to breathe.

“How does it work?” Kitty asked. “Maybe you’d stand a better chance of getting your memories back if you—"

“This isn’t like what Ogūn did to you,” he cut in. He wasn’t trying to sound cold, but drenching his thoughts in ice was all he could do to fight the burning. “He packed your memories in boxes and built something on the top from scratch. My memories…

“It’s not just putting together a jigsaw puzzle, kid. It’s like… you’ve got a few pieces, and some of them are just turned over, but some of them are missing. And some of them are warped out of shape, and to top it all off, you don’t even know what the picture on top is supposed to look like to begin with.”

He should be beyond headaches. If his healing factor should be good for one thing, it should be that he never had to deal with fucking headaches. He pinched his forehead and pressed his fingers in hard.

Kitty nuzzled under his arm like a puppy and rested her head on his collarbone. “Sorry,” she said.

He exhaled. “It’s okay, kiddo.” The game came back on the TV, and it took him a few minutes to notice that he’d been absentmindedly stroking Kitty’s hair. He leaned his head over to get a look at her face, and smiled. Some things didn’t change; hockey still sent her right to sleep.


	9. Chapter 9

Laura’s objective was to blend in. She aimed to accomplish this by watching everyone else. This plan had an immediate flaw: No one seemed to be able to decide what the right thing to do was.

Some children were purposefully ruffling up their uniforms and their hair, while others were keeping themselves pristine. Some were rolling their eyes as their guardians kissed their cheeks, and others were hugging their guards with a smile, while others were alone. Some were talking loudly, and others were quietly waiting for the class to start, some of them reading.

She had to latch onto a group to imitate. That was the best strategy for assimilation.

Before she could decide, the bell sounded for the start of the school day. In her homeroom class, she had already decided to take a seat in between the front and the back, close to the edge of the room that the door was on. She made for an empty seat before it could be taken by anyone else, but there was a hand around her arm, and she tensed, ready to retaliate.

“Laura, right?” the teacher was saying. “Why don’t you stay here at the front, and I can introduce you to everyone.”

This wasn’t an actual question. Reluctantly, she watched her seat get taken by a girl with glasses who was talking to the person in the next seat. She surveyed the class as she waited for them to fill the seats. There were two left, at the back and on the window side.

“Alright, everyone,” Mrs. Spence said, raising her voice above the chatter in the room. “Let’s settle down. This is Laura, she’s just moved here from Canada.”

One of the children in the front way put his hand in the air.

The teacher sighed. “You can get to know her later, Josh, I have to take the register.”

“Can I show her around the school?” Josh asked eagerly.

“And get out of… what is it on Mondays? Math class, right?” she accused. Judging by the look on Josh’s face, not inaccurately. “If Laura needs your help, she’ll ask you at interval. Go on and take a seat, Laura.”

She took the window seat. Several of the children watched her, or kept taking glances. She tried to steady her heart. She wasn’t in danger. No one was spying on her. They were just curious. She fiddled with the cord around her neck and tried to recall Logan’s exact words.

“There’s a lot of social groups in a school. All they want to do is figure out where you fit in. Stand your ground, keep your cool. Don’t tell anyone you can smell them from ten feet. You’ll be fine.”

The necklace Kitty had given her was decorated with small, long white spikes like sabre teeth. She’d given her a whole collection of accessories that she said she “didn’t need” any more. Laura had told her that she never needed any accessories; they served no functional purpose. It was comforting to hold onto it, though.

Math class was straightforward, even if mathematics at this level served no functional purpose to her. She had the basics – she could do the sums quickly and in her head. That gave her a tactical advantage against the rest of the class, who were writing down each stage of the equation, slowing them down significantly. Laura was the first to turn in her work, and the teacher gave her an additional task.

The second class of the day was French. Laura was handed a notebook and told that they were studying verb tenses.

“Mr. Laurent, this isn’t fair. Laura’s from Canada, she probably already knows French and can get an A without even trying,” said one of the other children. He was in the homeroom class, but she couldn’t remember his name. He was sitting at the back.

Mr. Laurent looked at her. “De quelle partie du Canada êtes-vous, Laura?” he asked.

“Alberta,” she answered. “L’Alberta n'est pas un comté francophone. J'ai appris à parler français à l'école.”

Mr. Laurent seemed to be happy with her performance. “Bravo! Bravo, Miss James. Johnny, you better stop taking up class time worrying about Laura and focus on your own work if you want to get as good as that.”

Johnny shot her a resentful look from across the room. She tried to ignore it. _He just wants to figure out where I fit in._

When the bell rang for the allotted “break” time, Laura followed a group of people to the cloakroom, which was lined with benches. Although some people took out small pieces of food, no one took inventory of their assets or rested; they were just as energetic and chatty as before, and some occasionally threw objects across the room.

Unwilling to be caught in the crossfire of the conflict, she took a seat away from the action, next to a person who was reading a book. From what Laura could see, the fight seemed to have no real motivation other than the endless feedback loop of retaliation, and the perpetrators had gleeful expressions on their faces. After thirteen minutes, the signalling bell rang out again, and the fight ceased as quickly and easily as it had begun.

School so far was easy. These lessons were simplistic and taught basic concepts – she studied her timetable for the classes where she would learn the “life skills” that Logan had said middle school was for. The most abstract class so far was English, but that wasn’t teaching anything at all, just how to understand the words in a language she already knew.

When the lunch period started, the other students chatted amongst themselves loudly, flaunting the interpersonal skills that they had had years of tutoring to master. Laura knew how to blend in, how not to be seen, but this was different. This wasn’t about flying under the radar, it was about actually… belonging.

“Do it, do it,” one of the children giggled to another. They were huddled in a group around one of the tables, sneaking glances at her as she carried her pre-prepared lunch to one of the vacant tables.

“She’ll probably apologise to _you_. Eh?” muttered one of the others, and the group devolved into snickers again.

Just as she passed by them, one of the children suddenly swung out an arm and slapped at her lunch. She was too quick for him, whisking it out of the way, and his hand went through the air with a surprised jolt. She met the shocked expression on his face with an interrogating glare.

“Why did you do that?” she demanded.

“Uh,” he said, and turned back around to his friends, hunkering his shoulders. As soon as Laura turned her back, the rest of the group erupted into laughter. She carefully took another look at them as she sat down, and saw that her attempted attacker’s neck was burning an embarrassed red.

She ignored him and instead unpacked her lunch. She took the first bite of her peanut butter and chip sandwich before someone sat down across from her, a girl with very dark hair and dark, thick make-up on her eyelids and lips.

“Hi. I’m Constance,” she greeted. “People call me Connie.”

She swallowed her mouthful. “Um… my name is Laura,” she said. There was a discomfort forming in her chest at saying her own name out loud; it was hers, and sharing it felt like exposing a nerve.

“Yeah, you’re new, right? Do you have any friends in North Salem yet?” she asked.

“Um…” Revealing her friends felt like another vulnerability. What if someone tried to take Logan and Kitty away from her? _Protect assets. Keep strategies to yourself. Appear normal._

She tried to remember what Logan had said. People were just trying to understand her, and if she wanted to fit in, she should try and understand them too. Sometimes the only way to understand was through asking, not just watching and listening. “Why do you wear such dark colours?” she asked.

Constance looked down at her clothes for a moment, and then back up at her. “I just like them. They’re… different from what everyone else wears.”

“Why is different good?” she followed up, frowning. Different drew attention. Attention could be nice, from the right people, people you could trust, but advertising your difference to everybody would draw all kinds of bad attention, too. Why take a risk like that?

She shrugged. “Fitting in is boring.”

Excitement seemed like a reward disproportionate to the risk. She had not succeeded in understanding this person.

“You moved here from Canada, right?” she asked.

“Yes.” 9711, 105th Avenue, Clairmont, Alberta. She could point to her old address on a map. She had lived less than a kilometre from the school.

“How come you moved?” she put her cheek in her hand. She didn’t have any food in front of her – it didn’t seem she had any reason for sitting in the cafeteria except to talk to people. Apparently, to talk to her.

“My dad works here,” she answered, and then took a bite of her sandwich.

“What about your mom?”

Laura slowed her chewing. Logan had told her to expect this question, but he hadn’t told her how to answer it. Most of her backstory, he had guided her through, but for some reason this was different. He’d said that she should decide for herself what to say about her lack of a mother.

She kept on eating her lunch. The time that was acceptable for an answer elapsed, and Constance apparently decided that it was officially unanswered. She spoke about herself instead. “My parents split last year. Dad went to go live in California with some girl. I haven’t even met her. I don’t want to, I bet she sucks.”

Laura could not see why she would have reached this conclusion. Perhaps she thought her father had bad judgement. She decided to observe further before making any comments on the subject.

After the school bell rang for the end of the day, Laura was again amongst chattering children, more energetic than ever now that they were not contained to a schedule. She watched some of them meet with their carers – like at the start of the day, some seemed to pay hardly any mind, dismissing their parents like taxi drivers doing them a service, while others greeted them as friends. Many more walked or cycled on with only their classmates or by themselves.

“Hey, Laura!” Constance exclaimed as she spotted her, as if reuniting with an old friend. “I’m gonna go down to the music shop. You wanna come?”

Alarms went off immediately. Unfamiliar party, unknown location, unforeseeable variables. The question was the easiest she’d had to answer all day. “No.”

Her hopeful smile deflated, although she couldn’t understand why. The way the question had been posed, her answer was in the appropriate parameters. “Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

“Hey, Laura!” another voice called. Although the same panic stuck her for a second, she recognised Kitty and saw her waving soon after. She was bouncing on the balls of her feet, and Logan was beside her, leaning on the railing.

“Hey, Sweet Tooth,” he said as she approached. “You make a friend?”

She looked at Constance, who had started walking away, presumably in the direction of the music shop. She turned back to Logan. “Her name is Constance,” she relayed.

The three of them set off walking at his indication. “How was it?” he asked. “What did you think of the classes?”

“They are easy,” she said. “And I do not understand the purpose of English class.”

“What about the people?” he inquired. He made no attempt to explain English class. She wasn’t sure whether or not this meant he knew its purpose any better than she did.

She thought about the question. Mostly, the people had all been just as confusing and difficult to navigate as he had led her to expect. He had also promised they would become less so over time. “I do not understand them… yet,” she added.

He smiled at her. That soft melted smile that she’d never seen anywhere else. “Expecting anything else would have been unfair. You did good, Laura.”

A feeling clutched at her chest. She reached for her necklace as she grappled to comprehend the shape of it. Compressed, like panic, put instead of pressing down, it seemed to release weight from her. She looked at his hands, which were resting in his pockets.

“Did anyone ask about your necklace?” Kitty asked.

Laura frowned. “Someone said it looked ‘cool’. They asked if it was made of real teeth.”

“What did you say?” she followed, smiling.

She recalled her words. “The mass production of a product which used real animal parts would be an inefficient and unsustainable use of resources.”

Kitty pushed her lips up and raised her eyes in consideration. “Could be worse,” she said to Logan.

Logan shrugged. “It’s accurate.” It was a factual observation. She didn’t understand what was amusing.

When they reached the bus stop, they slowed. The way Kitty leaned onto Logan’s shoulder was natural. “Can you wait with meeee?” she asked sweetly.

“You better not have conveniently forgotten your bus fare,” he warned, but there was a lightness to the warning that made it fall useless. This seemed like more of a routine than a question and an answer. Kitty produced her money from her pocket to show him.

Laura felt her feet in her shoes. They were the only part of her school uniform that was new – the rest they had bought second hand, as the school had a system for recycling the uniforms once the kids grew out of them. The only thing that they couldn’t get second hand was the shoes, so they were shiny and stiff. Her feet would blister a few times before she wore them in enough to stand comfortably in them.

As the bus pulled into the road, Kitty leaned on Logan’s shoulder, comfortable, and kissed his cheek. “See you later, Wolvie,” she said.

She considered the easy way that most children leaned into their parents, and rolled their eyes, and told them “See you later” like it was a sure fact. Logan was her father, that much had been decided. But they were still stiff in their shoes.

When they got back to the house and Laura took off her shoes – already feeling the blisters fade – Logan took a small silver object with a keypad from the counter and held it out to her.

“It’s a cell phone,” he explained. “Kitty helped me pick it out, it—it’s for emergencies. If you need to call me. I’ve got one too. Kit showed me how it works, I think I can get it. Here, you press that one to turn it on.”

The phone lit up when she pressed the button. After a moment, an option appeared for ‘Contacts’ and she selected it. In the list were three numbers – Logan, Kitty Pryde, and X Mansion.

“The mansion is only if you can’t reach me or Kit and you need help,” he added.

“This can be traced easily,” she said. She hadn’t often dealt with it on her own, but phone traces were often paramount to her missions.

“Only if you use it. If you do, and you think someone could be tracing the call, you can ditch it and get a new one. This is important for communication, Laura. I need to be able to reach you if something happens.”

Communication had never been an issue before. She would be released from the Facility, complete the job, and then return or be returned. But she was working as part of a team now, and communication made sense. She put the phone in her pocket.

Logan nodded and fetched some chips from the cupboard. “You got homework?”

“Yes,” she answered. The teachers seemed quite concerned with her ‘catching up’ with her classmates despite the arbitrary nature of most of the subjects. She took her books from her bag and placed them on the table. Logan told her that if she needed help, she could ask him, which she acknowledged.

The homework was simple, if tedious. She didn’t need to ask him any questions, although he did look over her shoulder a few times while preparing dinner. He didn’t offer any comments from his scrutiny.

Once dark fell, Laura woke twice from nightmares that quickly faded from her memory. Although the clock confirmed that it was the early hours of the morning, the lights outside her room had never gone out, and she peered out of her door with as much stealth as she reasonably could.

The sofa was still a sofa, never having transitioned into a bed that evening, and it was empty. She could still hear and smell Logan’s presence in the house, which meant he had to be in the kitchen, although none of the appliances were running. She edged around the corner slowly, keeping as much of herself obscured by the wall as possible.

Logan was sitting at the kitchen table with a wooden box and what looked like a lot of pieces of paper. He looked up suddenly and saw her, and she instinctively ducked back into cover.

“You alright, Sweet Tooth?” he asked. He didn’t sound angry or disapproving that she was outside of her bedroom during designated sleep hours. She took another look at what he was doing from her position against the wall.

“What are you doing?” she queried, after proving unable to glean the necessary information from mere observation.

He gestured for her to come closer and put down the piece of paper in his hand – it had an image printed on it. “I’m making a photo album,” he said. “Kitty got one of these for the Big Guy’s birthday and I just… I dunno. It felt like something I should do.”

She looked at the photographs spread out on the table. A lot of them had Logan in. She recognised some of the other people and the locations from when she had staked out the Xavier Institute. There was one photo of Logan and a blue man with a tail sleeping against each other on a sofa.

“That’s Kurt,” he said, and there was a fondness in his voice that didn’t seem completely intentional. “No one owned up to taking the photo. Probably a wise move.”

Next to it was a photo of a huge metal man throwing Logan at a basketball on the court on the Institute grounds. In the background, a girl appeared to be whooping while a boy next to her threw up his arms in defeat.

“Mutant Basketball Fastball Special,” he captioned, as if it explained anything. The same phrase was written on the back of the photograph.

Laura pointed out a photo of Logan flanked by a woman in Air Force uniform and a man, standing outside a fighter plane, and asked who she was.

“That’s Ace and Nick. Uh, Captain Danvers and Special Agent Fury. They were my friends not long after… after I lost my memories.”

Logan was holding a close-up photo of a young girl close to the camera with a big grin. In the background was Logan, pointedly looking away from the camera but with a poorly-suppressed smile on his face. It took her a moment to realise that the girl was Kitty. She looked much younger, although it couldn’t have been that long ago. Her hair was longer, and there was something different in her smile.

As he put it down, she noticed a family photo that for a moment didn’t seem like it belonged. The man in the photo was dressed in traditional Japanese clothing along with the other two people, and had a beaming smile and a neat, sharp haircut. Logan was barely recognisable without his slicked, pointed quiff and mutton chops, and that smile was a level of ecstasy she could scarcely imagine on him.

In the photo, he was looking at the young Japanese girl in front of him, who was also looking up at him and giggling. The woman on Logan’s right was visibly holding back laughter.

Logan gently took the photo from her and held it in his own hands. The expression on his face was complicated. “That’s Mariko and Akiko. My…” he struggled for the right words. “They used to be my family.”

“They’re gone,” Laura said.

He met her eyes briefly, as if he had almost forgotten she was there. “They’re fine. They’re in Japan. I get letters from them sometimes. They’re… good. Death isn’t the only way to lose people.”

She didn’t question that further – it seemed like a dangerous path to tread.

There was a photo taken on the lawn of the Xavier Institute, featuring several people that she didn’t recognise wearing long, granite-coloured robes with gold trim. A few of them were in the process of throwing their graduation caps in the air, while a young man with white feathered wings was suspended in the air high above the others, holding his cap up. Logan was standing to the side, noticeably uncomfortable in a shirt and tie.

“What is the purpose of a photo album?” she asked as he rose from his chair and opened the fridge. He didn’t answer right away, but she could see that he was evaluating his answer.

Logan placed a mug inside the microwave and turned it on. “Photographs are memories you can hold and share,” he said, and then verified, “That’s why Ro says I like them.”

Laura thought she could understand. Tangible memories could be useful, although they were also a liability. Physical copies of documents were more difficult to destroy or alter.

Then again, that was why they made good memories.

The microwave beeped, and he extracted the mug, testing the heat around the base with his hands. He handed it to her, and she glanced from it to him while the warmth travelled up her arms and into her chest.

“It’s to help you sleep,” he explained, sitting back down again.

She hesitated. “It is… sedative,” she said.

“It’s just warm milk,” he replied. She took a tentative sip, unsure how milk could induce drowsiness. Still, the sensation was smoothing out the lingering chills under her skin, and she soon felt like she could return to her bed without the threat of bad memories lurching into her dreams.

The next morning, when Laura had her school uniform on, Logan took a device from a paper bag that had been propped by the kitchen table. The table itself was now clear of photographs except for one, which was lying on top of an empty photo frame.

“I got this from the store,” he said, holding the camera for her to see. A shiver crept up her spine at the sight of the lens, remembering the beady eye of the CCTV in every room of the Facility. The way Rice was always hidden behind it, watching everything she did.

He put the camera down, and it rested on the table like a fox waiting to pounce on a rabbit. She didn’t like the way the lens was pointed at her. “Most parents, they take photos of their kids while they’re growing up. To… keep the memories safe,” he said. “It’s okay if you don’t want your photo taken, but I thought…”

Laura looked at the photo of Kitty and Logan that was still out on the table. They shared the space easily, like they fit around each other. She remembered the way that Kitty had fallen asleep against Logan’s shoulder as if she was as comfortable there as in her own bed. She could only begin to imagine how someone came to feel as safe with a person as they did on their own.

“I want to do it,” she told him.

He smiled at her and picked up the camera again, indicating that she move against the plain wall as a backdrop for the picture. She kept her expression neutral, like she had always practiced for her passport photographs. She waited for the flash of the camera, but it didn’t come.

“You’re allowed to smile, kiddo,” Logan informed her.

She turned on a smile, sensing that that was what was expected of her, but he lowered the camera immediately after raising it. He was starting to frown – she had done something wrong. Her breath pulled in sharply and she looked away, her shoulders slowly coming closer to her ears.

Logan knelt down on the wooden floor and tried to catch her eyes. Her claws pushed at the inside of her skin as a protective reflex, telling her to slash him and dash out the window, but she held still, as still as she could. If she stayed still, she couldn’t do more harm. She couldn’t make them more angry. Less discipline would be dealt.

He placed the camera on the floor and folded his hands together. She didn’t understand what he was doing. What should she be preparing for?

“What little creatures have you found in your Pokémon game?” he asked.

She didn’t understand the relevance of this topic. There had to be something more to this line of questioning, but she was unable to see it, so she had no choice but to list what she had found so far.

“Who’s your favourite?” he followed when she had finished.

She considered, weighing the pros and cons of different Pokémon. Finally, she decided on Poochyena. “It is Dark type and is known as the Bite Pokémon. Its speciality is intimidation and evasion,” she said.

“What does it look like?”

She described the creature in detail, explaining the different facets of its design and each component’s function, including its large teeth and tail, and Quick Feet ability.

Snap. The camera shutter clicked. Logan smiled. “Cameras capture real smiles best,” he said, discarding the camera on the table and pulling his leather jacket off the back of a dining chair. “Now let’s get you to school. You can tell me more about your Pokémons on the way.”


	10. Laura

The thing about having four missed calls from an X-Man was that either the world was ending, someone was dying, or someone couldn’t decide what to have for lunch. When returning those four calls, you have to be prepared for all three of those possibilities.

“Without mayonnaise,” Logan advised, immediately after picking up the fifth call of the day from Kitty.

“I’m not calling about lunch,” she told him curtly. “Why didn’t you pick up my calls?”

“Because my entire life doesn’t revolve around you, Half-Pint. And yesterday you called me about sandwiches.”

“Did something happen to Laura?” she asked. There was real concern, but mostly this was a hurdling block to get past so that she could pester him more.

There was always a piece of his brain that was ready to flare into anxiety about Laura, which he would have to deflate by repeated self-assurances that she was a capable kid, that she could handle herself in a middle school and if anything happened, the school would call him. “No. She’s fine, she’s at school.”

“Well I know you’re not doing anything else with your time,” she said incredulously. “What if I’d been in trouble?”

The likelihood of Kitty needing his help specifically with any given issue was probably relatively low. There was a whole house of X-Men she could go to, who would probably be of more use. “Then you would have been used as a cautionary tale for years to come. The Girl Who Cried Wolverine.”

“Funny,” she said flatly.

“Yeah, I’m hilarious.”

She turned back to her interrogation, “So what were you doing?”

He sighed. Kitty was possibly the nosiest kid he’d ever met. She had once tried to start a club called X-Factor Investigations, which had quickly fallen apart due to a lack of actual stories in the mansion and an outright ban from trying to fly the Blackbird out to get some better scoop (again).

“I was job hunting. Alright?” he answered.

“…Job hunting,” she repeated.

“Yeah, it’s how people make money when they aren’t being privately funded by a millionaire with mind control powers,” he said. He knew he was hardly in a position to contest the morality of running a school entirely through influencing the thoughts of the school board and hiring self-certified teachers, so he’d never brought it up. No one wanted to do teacher training sessions.

“But… you. Normal job,” she said, like those two statements were a contradiction in themselves. He could hear her shaking her head. “Nuh-uh. Does not compute.”

It was strange for him, too. After his amnesia, he’d been drafted into Alpha Flight and then passed on to the X-Men. His life before that seemed to have been more of the same, travelling between teachers and teammates, always covert and never anything you could write on a CV. Still, he’d been trying. He might not have any formal training, but he had skills. “I dunno, I’ve been around for a long time. I got experience.”

“Mm. ‘Was trained by a contract killer in Japan for an unknown length of time, then I killed him.’ ‘Part of a super secret team for the Canadian Government where I wore orange spandex and sliced people with my knife hands.’ ‘Google _Thor and Wolverine fight unknown alien invaders_ , you’re welcome.’ Who are your references? Captain America? Is Captain America one of your references?”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, pun’kin,” he said. “If all you’re gonna do is berate me, I think I’ll—"

“Ororo’s back.”

Although it shouldn’t have been a shock – she was on schedule, like always – it made him falter for a moment. He’d become disconnected from the events of the Institute in the last week, and the mind had a way of preserving things the way you left them, even when they’d long moved on.

“So?” he asked.

“Soooooo, what do you want me to tell her?” she said, as if this was an oversight.

“Same thing you told everyone else: Nothing,” he replied.

“What’s that? I didn’t catch it,” she bluffed, and then hurried on, “Oh, here she is now, I’ll pass you over!”

“Kitty, no—” He heard the phone being fumbled with between holders, and there was a tense moment where he considered hanging up and turning the phone off. Before he’d even finished that thought, he heard her voice.

“Hello, Logan,” Ororo greeted, in that diplomatic way she did when she was trying to decide whether she should be pissed off.

“Hey, Ro,” he returned. “How was the trip?”

He could hear her high heels on the linoleum in the kitchen of the Institute. She liked to pace around when she was on the phone; he could picture it. “It was refreshing, thank you. I had hoped to tell you about it in person…” she said, “but no one seems to know where you are.”

“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “Urgent business.”

“Logan,” she said. She let that be a statement on its own, let him steep in the genuine concern in her voice. Then she continued, “You know we’re always here for you. I’m always here for you. If there’s something going on…”

“I know, Ro. This is just something I gotta do by myself,” he told her. Ororo wasn’t a great believer in things than could only be completed by yourself; he knew this. But she always respected a person’s decision.

She compromised, “Even if you don’t need my help, you can always talk to Kurt and I. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I know. Give the Fuzzball an extra kiss from me,” he said. He wished he could talk to her longer, even just exist in the same space as her – if that had to be over a phone line, so be it – but he wasn’t sure he could bear it for very long without spilling everything to her.

“Good luck, Logan. In whatever it is you’re doing,” she signed off.

He hung up and relax back into the sofa. He glanced at the clock to see how long there was before he had to pick up Laura from school, and sprang to his feet as he realised he was already late. “Shit,” he said, snatching his jacket off the chair and checking his keys in his pockets as the door clicked shut behind him.

A few days later, it was looking like the last day of summer. The sun was shining warmly in its last farewell, and kids in the park were chasing each other with water guns like the clock was ticking down on doomsday. Green was clinging to the trees with everything it had, but the paths were already littered with brown and gold leaves.

Fall had already breezed into town a few weeks ago, but that wasn’t going to stop any red-nosed little kids from pestering their parents for ice cream from the van.

Laura wasn’t pestering. She wasn’t saying anything, just silently accompanying him through the park. She still constantly surveyed her surroundings like she was doing recon for a mission, keeping to the outskirts of everything and remaining undetected, just like she’d been trained to.

“Here,” Logan said, handing her some change that he had in his pocket. “Get us both an ice cream. Probably the last chance to get it from the van this year.”

He wasn’t sure she understood or cared about the novelty, but she obliged and joined the queue. He sat down on a bench on the path and sighed, almost expecting his breath to frost. They weren’t quite there yet.

He probably needed to get Laura a winter coat and hat and scarf and gloves. He tried to picture her all bundled up with her little face peeping out, and it almost brought a smile to his face.

“Hello, Logan.”

He practically jumped out of his skin when he saw Ororo standing on the path. His very first thought was that it must be an illusion. That said something about the daily goings-on of the X-Men, he was sure.

“Ororo. What’re you doing here?” he asked. There was a very real part of him that was glad to see her. He hadn’t realised until now how much he’d missed seeing her face and hearing her voice in person.

But the rest of him was in panic. He had to resist the urge to dart his eyes over to Laura and check that she was alright – even though logically she wasn’t in any danger from Ororo’s arrival, it was how the brain worked. In a crisis, your eyes go towards your precious things. If he glanced at Laura, Ororo would see that he was hiding something, and follow his gaze to find it.

She sat down next to him on the bench. “I think I’ll ask you that first. You’re still in New York; why?”

He needed time to think. His instincts told him to fiercely protect his secrets, but that was what they always did, even with small and meaningless things. Maybe he should just tell Ororo what was going on and trust that she could guard her mind from any impromptu probing from Charles. “The scenery?” he suggested.

“Logan,” she said, stern. “If there was something big going on, you wouldn’t keep it so close to the school. So what are you doing?”

His eyes travelled around the park in a way that would hopefully be mistaken for casual. They rested on Laura, who was standing unnaturally still some ten feet away from the path. She was holding two ice creams that were beginning to drip. She was ready to drop those ice creams and come at Storm with everything she had. She was scared.

“How’d you even know I was here?” he diverted. He had two different instincts pulling him in opposite directions; trust Ororo, and hide Laura. He needed more time to let the victor emerge.

She inhaled in the start of a sigh that she didn’t finish. “Kitty told me you would be here. And before you get angry at her, I will point out that that was all she said. I have no doubt she knows a lot more than that.”

Logan finished her sigh for her. _Oh, Kitten._ “Ever since her parents split, she’s been awful concerned with keeping us right an’ proper.”

“Is there something not so right and proper about what you’re doing now?” she asked, turning the conversation back around.

Ororo was here because Kitty was trying to keep the family together.

He gestured for Laura to come over and then turned back to Ororo. “I know I’ve dropped off the map before and it’s usually ended in blood. I know… I must’ve worried you. I’m sorry. I just didn’t wanna take any chances.”

She was still frowning, trying to understand, when Laura approached the bench and handed Logan his ice cream. “Thanks, Sweets,” he said.

He could feel Ororo’s eyes moving between them rapidly, putting it together. She was always quick on the mark. In Laura’s eyes was a clear question: _Enemy?_ He gave a minute shake of the head in response. “Laura, this is Ororo,” he introduced. “Ororo, Laura.”

She recovered quickly enough that it sounded mostly normal when she said, “It’s nice to meet you, Laura,” with a polite nod.

Laura nodded back, licking her ice cream, and then turned and walked towards the big pirate ship in the kids’ park. Whether it was because she sensed the following conversation was going to be private, she didn’t want to be near a new person, or she just wanted to play on the pirate ship, he was glad.

All of the right questions were painted on her face. He watched her sort them into an order, quickly, silently, and then posed the first one. “Who is she?”

“Do you really need an explanation, darlin’?” he asked.

“No, but I’d like one,” she said. “Who is she, Logan?”

“She’s my responsibility,” he answered. “That’s all that matters.”

Ororo was looking at her standing on the pirate ship with her ice cream. Logan wondered if she noticed the way she stood as if she was adjacent to the rest of the world and not a part of it. It was most noticeable when she was among other children, but it was in the way she walked wherever she went.

“Why not take her back to the Institute?” she asked. “It would be easier to care for her there.”

He huffed. “No way. The last thing that kid needs is to be used as another weapon.”

She frowned, and he felt it in his heart before she said it. “Is that what you think of the X-Men?”

“No, I—Goddamn it. Ro, it’s how _she_ sees the X-Men. It’s how she sees everything. Assets, an-- an’ bidders an’ a pyramid o’ killing and money-makin’ where she’s at the bottom. The X-Men’ll slot right into that and she’ll go on taking orders like it’s what she was made for. I just want to give her something normal.”

He looked at his hands, old but not old enough, curled around his ice cream. He hadn’t popped his claws in a while, so the scars between his knuckles had faded almost to invisibility. These hands had taken more lives than most people could put into perspective. Not Laura.

“Not that I’m… the most qualified. In ‘normal’,” he added.

She sat back on the bench with a thoughtful hum. “I’d invite you to point to a mutant who is,” she said.

He didn’t wish for things; he just didn’t. There was no fairy godmother to solve anyone’s problems, and even if there was they’d probably turn out to be some tricky alien genie who’d make your life hell. Wishing was just praying when you didn’t have a god, and without a god there wasn’t a damn use in praying, was there?

But still. If he could have a wish, he knew what it’d be. “I wish I could just take her pain away,” he said.

“You can’t, any more than I can take yours,” she said.

“I know.” He sat in silence for a while, ruminating in his hopeless wishes, and Ororo didn’t intervene. He finished his ice cream, because it was better than letting it melt any more than it already had. Then he called Laura over and rose from the bench.

Ororo stood with him, and then bent down to put a kiss on his cheek. She pressed the side of her face against his for a lingering moment. It didn’t need translating.

“It was very nice to meet you, Laura,” she said.

“It was nice to meet you too,” she replied. She was straightfaced – it was a courtesy, not a statement.

They parted ways, and Logan didn’t try to make conversation on their way home like he sometimes did. He was still thinking about wishes and dreams and what ‘normal’ meant to normal people.

“How did she discover us?” Laura asked.

His surprise at her starting a conversation by herself stopped him from answering for a moment. Then he recovered, “Kitty told her where to find me, and then I told her about you. We can trust her, Sweet Tooth.”

“There more people who know of my whereabouts, the more risk there is of Kimura’s agents discovering me,” she reminded him.

“I know,” he said. “I will try to hide you as long as I can, but nothing stays a secret forever. If they find you, I won’t let them hurt you. I promise, darlin’.”

\---

On the way home, Laura was thinking about Kimura. Over dinner, Laura was thinking about Kimura. Her malicious grin was waiting for her around every corner of her mind, teasing her for how stupid she’d been.

This never would have happened if she’d stayed on her own. If she was still moving, she could have stayed ahead of the Facility forever, but instead she’d let herself get comfortable here. She’d trusted somebody other than herself, and now she was in danger. She was trying to decide which of her clothes were the most practical to take with her, what time she should exit through the window, whether it was worth the extra weight to pack food.

“Laura?” Logan asked, with a hand on the doorframe of her bedroom. “What are you up to, kiddo?”

Her heart clenched. There were two sides of her mind tugging at whether or not to tell him what she was doing. He had not punished her when she ran away before – he had said he would never stop her from leaving.

That was stupid, too. If you wanted something, you had to guard it and keep it close. If he really wanted to help her like he said, why would he let her leave? Stupid. Logan was just a stupid old man, nothing more.

“I’m leaving,” she said. There was a bated moment where all the air in the apartment stood still. It ended swiftly.

“Okay,” Logan said. “I’ll help you pack. There’s some more chicken in the fridge I can fry up, and you can take it with you.”

He disappeared from the doorway and into the kitchen. She followed tentatively, watching from her spot around the corner of the wall. He saw her and smiled, then suggested, “Hey, while I get this done, why don’t we watch a movie? Just one last movie off the stack. Any one you like.”

She should go now. Every moment she stayed here was a moment she was in danger of being found—but it was inadvisable to turn down food and warmth for as long as she could get it. She chose _The Lion King_ and started it running on the TV.

It was a tale of royal betrayal with anthropomorphic lions. Many of the Disney pictures seemed to feature animals in this way, which didn’t make much sense to her.

Logan joined her on the sofa as the obvious villain, darker than the other lions and with a malicious curl in his voice, was introduced. He threw his brother, the king, into a stampeding herd of wildebeest, and the lion cub from the first scene rushed to his side.

“Dad?” Simba clamoured tearfully, nudging his father.

Laura felt Logan’s hand brush the top of her head. His arm was around the back of the sofa, and he was starting to stroke her hair. She looked at him, but his eyes were fixed on the screen. This was one of those things he did without thinking about it, like humming tunes while cooking.

It felt nice. She found herself hoping he wouldn’t stop.

The film progressed, and Simba was adopted by a meercat and a wild boar who had been outcast. He grew up away from his royal responsibilities and his pride, until he encountered the lioness playmate from his childhood.

She rested her head against Logan’s shoulder. She was trying to fill a curiosity about why Kitty did it, although she didn’t find an answer she could have explained.

It would be foolish to set off now, before she was well-rested. The smart move was to stay here until morning, and set off at first light. She drifted naturally into a comfortable position, tucking her hands under her cheek with her head in Logan’s lap. All the while, he stroked her hair.

Her eyes started to drift closed during the last song of the movie. It had ended predictably and colourfully, with everybody in their righteous place. Before Laura drifted into sleep, she felt a tear she couldn’t understand slip out of her eye.

…

The cold metal beams under her hands and feet did nothing to dull the raging fire that was burning through her. The piping hot feeling was clouding her brain, forcing her into a cage of sweat.

At first, the darkness had been her own tool to escape. Blowing the fuse box had been easy, and slashing the emergency lighting system was a minor reformulation at most. But now there were complications. She couldn’t take the exit she had planned just yet.

Logan’s face was cast in shadow, his head drooping while he was strapped to a board that was all too familiar. She watched him start to wake from where she was perched in the rafters. He pulled against his restraints.

“I wouldn’t bother with that,” Kimura cooed, and Laura’s eyes locked onto her as she walked into the spotlight he was bathed in. The whole Facility was blotched with her scent, but seeing her was different. She couldn’t see her face, but she could perfectly picture the grin on it as she tilted Logan’s chin up.

“Terribly sorry about this, Weapon X,” she said. “I just need you to draw a little worm out of the woodwork.”

“No idea what you’re talking about, lady,” he snarled. “But I do know I’m gonna really enjoy kicking your ass.”

She laughed, “Don’t you know it’s rude not to get to know a girl first?” She pulled on a tray at the edge of the light, laden with tools. “For example, did you know that I pierced my own ears when I was fourteen? I have to be careful not to let them heal over, because, well, you know. I’m afraid there isn’t a needle in the world that could puncture my skin any more.”

Laura flinched when she heard the needles entering Logan’s skin; it was barely a sound, more of a shiver up her spine. Logan sucked his breath in and didn’t make a whine. She squirmed, frozen. She should act. She should help him. But she couldn’t, not if she wanted to get out of here alive.

“This can stop anytime you want it to, X,” she murmured, close to Logan’s shoulder as she drove in a corkscrew.

“Barely feel a thing,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Hn,” she hummed, and Laura could tell there was a wide smile on her lips. She patted his cheek. “Wasn’t talking to you, old timer.”

Panic clutched her heart even harder. She had to move, now. Now! The longer she waited, the more time Kimura would have to pinpoint her exact position. She braced against the rafters, angled her body, and dove, hoping to catch her at least slightly by surprise, knock her off balance, buy herself enough time to get Logan free—

She realised mid-air that that was the reaction she had been hoping for. She slammed into the floor, and then there were people in black Kevlar surrounding her, people who had been invisible to her nose, and one of them had their knee in her back, her hands and feet being pinned down.

“Ready to come home, X-23?” Kimura asked. Her hand was on a control panel, gleaming in the harsh spotlight.

“Leave him alone!” she growled from the floor.

She grinned, “Gladly.”

She slammed a lever on the controls, and the light went out. The pressure lifted off her back, and many hurried footsteps faded away. She didn’t understand what was happening, but she scrambled towards Logan while she could.

“Get out of here, kid, go,” he said. There was blood on his breath.

She ignored him and kept fumbling with the restraints, trying to size them up in the dark so she knew how to cut. Several metres away, there was a hiss of a valve opening. She froze.

“Laura, go!”

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. In a few seconds she would smell it. There wasn’t enough time. She needed to save him…

When her senses started fading back out of the dark, the first one was the stench of fresh blood all around her. It was sticking to her clothes, and matting her hair, and spattering her face.

Next was a heavy, wet breathing beneath her. She could feel his chest struggling to rise, shuddering to collapse. She could hear the thump of his pulse, and a croak of her name carried on a breath.

Then the lights started to flicker, and for the first few flashes all she saw was a mess of red and black. Then she started to see the lines of his face. The shine of his eyes.

“Laura,” he wheezed.

 _Shlk_. She sheathed all her claws at once, and he winced as the one pinning his stomach retracted. “Sorry,” she stammered. “I am—I am sorry.”

“Laura…”

“Sorry. I am sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Tears were burning tracks down her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. You’re safe.”

“I’m sorry…” Her shoulders shook. She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t look at what she’d done.

“I’m here. It’s okay.” His voice was gaining strength. He didn’t sound injured anymore. His breaths were coming easier. “It’s okay. You’re safe. I’m here.”

Something warm and secure was wrapped around her shoulders. She dared to open her eyes and saw the blank TV in front of her, the soft glow of the lamp beside the sofa illuminating the room.

“It’s okay,” Logan said, his mouth close to her ear, his cheek against her hair, and he was holding her fists against her chest in a cross. “I’ve got you, Laura. You’re safe.”

She reached for his shoulder and buried her face in his neck. “Daddy…”

He stroked her hair with one hand and held her tight with the other. “It’s okay, Sweetheart. I’m here.” She breathed him in – hair and laundry detergent and tobacco smoke. Nothing like the sterilising fluid and metal at the Facility.

Laura had never been held like this before. A tangle of limbs, interlocking tightly and securely. Safe, and warm. Safe and warm. She focused on the ticking of the clock. It was something rhythmic, steady, something her mind could find peace in. No surprises.

“Come on,” Logan prompted gently. “Let’s get you into bed.” He hoisted up her legs and took her under the knees as he stood. His beard was scratching against her forehead, and she leaned into it.

The light dimmed against her eyelids, and he set her down on the bed in her room. He pulled the covers around her, sitting at the foot of the bed. It was cooler in the sheets than his arms had been. “You gonna be okay, pun’kin?” he asked.

She nodded.

“You want me to stay here until you fall asleep?” he offered.

She nodded, keeping her eyes on him. As long as she could see him, he wasn’t in any danger. Kimura couldn’t get to him here, not on her watch.

“C’mon. Close your eyes, darlin’,” he said, his hand rubbing her ankle through the duvet. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.” Backlit from the soft light in the hallway, she couldn’t make out much of his face. Only the shadow of his nose and the aged creases around his eyes.

Reluctantly, she closed her eyes. She listened for his breathing, and felt the way the bed sank under his weight, but after a while, she became so used to it that she started to doubt there was anything there at all. She cracked her eyes open, and he was still there, softly silhouetted in profile.

He looked… peaceful. She used to think ‘peace’ was just the empty space between missions, between chaos, between war. She had learned different since meeting Logan.

“…Dad?”

“Mm?” he said, turning his head again.

“Can you sing?”

There was a pause where the whispers of the outside world were the loudest thing in the room. “You want me to sing to you?”

He sounded apprehensive. Maybe it had been a mistake to ask. She held onto her duvet in the quiet and concluded she would have to be content with his presence.

He started soft, and a little wobbly, trying to find the tune. “ _Mori mo iyagaru, Bon kara saki-nya… Yoki mo chiratsuku-shi, Ko mo naku-shi._ ”

He was out of practice, and she wasn’t sure that he was singing it in the key it was intended to be sung in. But it was a pretty song.

“ _Bon ga kita-tote, Nani ureshi-karo… Katabira wa nashi, Obi wa nashi._ ”

The words sounded more familiar on his tongue now. Her eyelids were starting to drop closed, and she resisted. She wanted to watch his back. When he was vulnerable like this, all sorts of dangers could emerge.

“ _Kono ko you naku, Mori wo ba ijiru… Mori mo ichi-nichi, Yaseru-yara._ ”

She would stay awake. She would keep her eyes open.

“ _Hayo-mo yuki-taya, Kono zaisho koete… Mukou ni mieru wa, Oya no uchi…_ ”

The soft yellow light from the doorway drifted into black.

“ _Mukou ni mieru wa, Oya no uchi._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of Part 1! I'm going to take a bit of a break before I start publishing Part 2, but rest assured I have a plan! Thank you for making it this far and I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. I'd love to know what you liked about it and your general thoughts, so please leave a comment!


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